Ireland win the Home Internationals

I think we have to admit that this has been Ireland’s year in amateur golf. After winning the European Team Championships and the Boys’ Home Internationals they now also added the Men’s Home Internationals to the resume of the year. England Captain Jonathan Plaxton reports from the last day at Muirfield;

“The final day of the 2008 ‘Homes’ brought a new course for the players to contend with. A wholesale change in the wind direction meant that players had to adapt to a completely different course from the one they had been playing. Having lost Eddie Pepperell, who won both games on his debut v Wales, to a mystery virus another early morning phone call meant that Charlie Ford was similarly ill and unable to play.
Having been joined by Jamie Abbott in case of such an emergency Jamie got the appearance he deserved for travelling so far but sadly no points, his lack of a practice round and last minute arrival being a distinct disadvantage. Another defeat (1.5 to 3.5) in the foursomes put Ireland in the driving seat and although England held the initiative in seven of the ten singles for some of the afternoon a reversal of fortunes in the top two singles saw likely wins turn into half points only. Although Matt Haines and Todd Adcock recorded wins others could not. Tommy Fleetwood was deprived of a possible half when his opponent was wrongly given a free drop on the final hole. Having plugged in an area not closely mown and in the same position where another player had earlier been forced to take a penalty drop near to a bunker his Irish opponent capitalised on the situation to scrape home 1 up. Another difference of opinion between player and referee saw Steve Uzzell’s match completed in less than ideal circumstances and with the match outcome decided and game 10 all square play was brought to a close and the players shook hands. Farren Keenan therefore claimed 2.5 points from his 3 singles. Ireland fully deserve the title having won all three of their matches. 

The event concluded, in rapidly deteriorating weather conditions, under canvass (I.e in a very crowded tent) with the medal presentation to players who could now fully appreciate the quality of Muirfield links. Sadly despite the warm and secure clubhouse being on hand and empty, officials and players were made to walk two hundred yards, in very inclement weather conditions, to use a small marquee. We look forward to Hillside in 2008!  /JP”

For full coverage of the Home Internationals visit the Scottish Golf Union website.

Not England’s day at Muirfield

England Captain Jonathan Plaxton reports from day 2 of the Home Internationals at Muirfield;

“Having suffered a sound beating by Ireland on day one Scotland were clearly spoiling for a fight with England. Another 0730 start, for the first of five foursomes, meant an early start for the teams in what were very chilly but dry weather conditions. Sadly prior to play commencing Eddie Pepperell was declared unfit and subsequently had to go home on doctors orders. Matt Haines stepped in to partner Tom Sherreard and secure a half point which would turn out to be the only good news for England before lunch - 0.5 to 4.5 being the outcome of the foursomes series.
After lunch a determined approach to salvaging victory gradially faded to an attempt to save face and the result was already decided with five games still on the course. Farren Keenan aced the 7th hole on his way to a second last hole singles victory whilst Tom Sherreard remained unbeaten after 3 games. Todd Adcock was ‘mugged’ twice after surrendering a lead to first lose his foursome and then half his singles match. In the latter game his oppo finished eagle / birdie!
With the ‘tail enders’ once more delivering the points a closing birdie from Tommy Fleetwood secured his second singles win. Not even the surroundings of Muirfield on a glorious and almost windless afternoon could soften the blow of a 5 - 10 defeat by Scotland with Ireland setting up for Friday with a win over Wales. Nothing but a Friday victory, and by a wide margin, would give England any chance of the title.
Bring on Ireland was the unanimous sentiment of England’s remaining 10 players!
JP”

England win the first match

England proved to be the stronger team in the first match of the Home Internationals against Wales. The singles results in the afternoon swung the match in England’s direction and at finish the score was 8.5-6.5 in England’s favour. England Captain, Jonathan Plaxton reports:

“England’s defence of the title, won last year at County Louth in Ireland, opened successfully at Muirfield.
On a day when it seemed like more holes changed hands than were actually halved the England Team, which includes six new caps, staged a come back in the singles after losing the morning foursomes by two points to three.
Having spent two days preparing to play Wales, in a repeat of the 2007 opening match, the foursomes series once more went to Wales who played extremely well and clearly meant business!
On a breezy but mainly dry day the punitive rough claimed many victims and the unusually green fairways stood out against the much larger expanse of jungle! However following lunch a rear guard action in the singles saw England safely home by 8.5 to 6.5 which slightly flattered as five of these points came from the last five games! With Ireland despatching Scotland (9.5 to 5.5 after a near whitewash in the foursomes) England’s Thursday game is against hosts Scotland.
JP”

Full coverage of the Home Internationals on the Scottish Golf Union website.

Another 5, but this time out of 12…

The Ryder Cup teams have been selected as you probably know. 5 englishmen will be among the 12 Europeans at Valhalla. Rose, Westwood and Wilson from the list are joined by Casey and Poulter as wild cards and I am sure that it will be a great moment to follow Faldo’s men in the battle. There is no doubt that this Captain will be a passionate one even though perhaps a bit solitary. There was a great piece in the Daily Telegraph the other day where Faldo described his thinking when deciding to have only one assistant (previous Captains has had at least a few…);

When his go-it-alone policy was queried, Faldo asked: “Would you trust somebody to come and give you information and, if you got it, would you trust that it was 100 per cent?”

With someone responding that they would have every faith in information coming from a person he knew well and had appointed for himself, Faldo replied: “Well fine then, we’re different!”

Read the full article in The Telegraph online.

Wednesday this week marks the start of the Home Internationals 2008. This year’s event, by many considered the premiere amateur event of the year in Great Britain and Ireland, is played at Muirfield in Scotland. The format with 11 players on each side and the combination of foursomes and singles in the round robin setup promises three very exciting days, before it is decided what team will get to lift the Raymond Trophy on Friday night. You can follow the action here.

Not sure about that one…

The LPGA Tour is introducing a language policy starting in 2009 stating that players must speak English in order to play on the tour. Apart from what is being written about Annika Sorenstam’s farewell tour this could be the most press the LPGA Tour gets this year. I am not sure this is the kind of publicity they were after though. Comments in various media about the policy include describing it as a double bogey and the organisation is accused for choosing a not very clever route; “The LPGA No Habla Intelligente”. The latter one has a really interesting take on the ‘problem’. I guess you can understand that an American organisation that focuses on attracting sponsorship from an American market wants their players to be able to communicate with their potential customers. At the same time it is easy to see that this kind of thinking is most probably a bit narrow minded. The biggest growth in golf and particularly in women’s golf in the future is quite likely not going to be in the United States, but in various parts of Asia. So maybe a better policy would have been to try and get the American players to speak some other languages as well?

It is, as always, a busy weekend in the World of Golf. In the amateur game the ‘two sides’ in Europe met Friday-Saturday, Great Britain and Ireland vs the rest of Europe in both boys’ and men’s golf. In the St Andrews Trophy GB&I came out victorious, 13.5-10.5, and the GB&I boys in the Jacques Leglise Trophy proved to be just as strong and beat their opponents 14-10 after a very strong second day.

As the EGU Order of Meritis approaching its finish for the season, the Lee Westwood Trophy was played at Rotherham Golf Club. Gary Wolstenholme won one shot ahead of Sam Haywood, on fire with a last round 63 which took him to second place.

Top 5 in the Lee Westwood Trophy;

 

1	Gary	Wolstenholme	Carus Green	68	66	65	68	267
2	Sam	Haywood	Rotherham	69	69	67	63	268
3	Jack	Senior	Heysham	70	70	70	64	274
4	Matthew	Swales	Cumberwell Park	71	71	65	68	275
5	Nick	McCarthy	Moortown	68	73	67	69	277

Lastly, there are interesting things going on on both sides of the Atlantic as the Ryder Cup selection reaches crunch time. On the European Tour the attention this week goes to Gleneagles while the PGA Tour continues its FedEx Cup with a visit to the TPC of Boston and the Deutsche Bank Championships. This tournament finishes on the Monday which I once found out the hard way when I visited the tournament. I had my return ticket booked for the Sunday night not thinking about the Monday Bank Holiday!

 

Heading for the tour!

Another player from last year’s England Elite squad that has really started to make a name for himself is Seve Benson. With one win already under his belt on this year’s Challenge Tour Seve just carded another one by winning in the Czech Republic this weekend. It took him three extra holes to secure the victory and with that Seve is now on top of the Challenge Tour rankings. Read the European Tour article here: htp://www.europeantour.com/default.sps?pageid=127&pagegid=%7BAEFB93B0%2DEFF5%2D4C05%2DAB0F%2DFD08D947D944%7D&infosid=3&eventid=2008760&reportid=63763

The European Individual Amateur Championships in Denmark saw a German winner with Luke Goddard as the top English finisher, in third place. Results can be found here.

Another 5 out of 9!

The R&A have picked their team to represent the GB&I against the rest of Europe and just as in the men’s equivalent, the St Andrews Trophy, the Jacques Leglise Trophy team has 5 English players in the team of 9 players.

Great Britain and Ireland Team (English in bold)

Michael Stewart, 18 (Troon Welbeck, Captain)
Alan Dunbar, 18 (Rathmore)
Ben Enoch, 18 (Truro)
Tommy Fleetwood, 17 (Formby Hall)
Stiggy Hodgson, 18 (Sunningdale)
Gary King, 18 (Tyrrells Wood)
Luke Lennox, 18 (Moyola Park)
Tom Lewis, 17 (Welwyn Garden City)
Eddie Pepperell, 17 (Drayton Park)

The full article can be found on the R&A website.

This week is a big qualifying week for next year’s Open Championship. Well, maybe not quite but perhaps that is the most prestigious price that the winner of the European Individual Amateur Championships get. Not that it is a bad thing to be allowed to call yourself the European Champion for a year but a start in the Open is probably what these players would go the extra mile for. Live scoring is available on the following link:

http://www.golfbox.dk/livescoring/leaderboard.asp?tour={BC83AF6A-B15D-43D7-B187-F43F355A9254}

How about that for a weekend…

This weekend must have been a true record breaking weekend. I wonder what it is like to know that you are the fastest man on the earth. 9.69 won Usain Bolt the Gold Medal in Beijing and it seemed like he didn’t even run all the way. Incredible!

In golf what happened over the weekend must have been some sort of a record too. There were Swedish winners on the PGA Tour (Carl Pettersson), the European Tour (Peter Hanson), the Ladies European Tour (Lotta Wahlin) and the Challenge Tour (Klas Eriksson). It kind of makes you wonder what happened on the LPGA Tour…

Chris Wood finished in a tie for 18th in his European Tour debut and with that he was one of 7 English players in the top 20. Full results from the SAS Masters here.

Breath of fresh air

What a breath of fresh air that was! Some bags were bigger then their players, some caddies (who all had to be under 18 years of age) looked like 25 year olds with a beard and most were somehwere in between. The Reid Trophy at Coxmoor Golf Club was a refreshing experience in that it helped me remember how simple golf should be. At 12, 13 or maybe 14 most players have not yet learned the habits of mirroring their favourite player on tour and spending way too much time to prepare for the shot at hand. This was see it, grip it and rip it and I hope we will never take that away from them. But I am sure that once these players get some proper coaching and they get to know what they should be doing in a pre shot routine they will start figuring out how difficult it is… No, let us allow the players of tomorrow to play the game in the simple way it was designed to be played!

What’s on…

As the new week progresses the European Tour has come to a halt in Sweden. Arlandastad Golf is hosting the Scandinavian Masters and it is time for Chris Wood to make his debut as a professional. He is joined by quite an impressive array of ex England Internationals who soon after making the move into professional golf are producing some quite impressive results. Robert Dinwiddie, Oliver Fisher, Ross McGowan, Jamie Moul (who got the nod following his excellent performance in the Russian Open) and Paul Waring are all teeing it up in Stockholm.

In England some of the future Internationals are competing in the Reid Trophy at Coxmoor Golf Club. I shall be interested to see some of these young players even though I am not so sure how much of an indicator success at under 14 level is for future performances.

Besides all this the Boys Amateur Championship is already underway at Little Aston Golf Club. This action can be followed here.