YIDU TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP

Hearty congratulations to our Sheffield team:

Lewis Hollingworth, Charlie Daughtrey, Oliver Smith, Jim Tasker, Neil Stones, Tim Brind with Mark Woodall (reserve).

The 6-Man TC event covered a 2-day weekend at The Oaks Golf Club. Our team took the opportunity to have a practice round on the Saturday afternoon, in particular to suss out the lengths of various shots for club selection, find out where the kidney-shaped hidden bunkers were as well as how to avoid landing up in the various ponds dotted around the course. More importantly, however, seemed to be the ‘social’ golfing challenge between the two pairs which resulted in the ‘Branton old boys’, the Neil duo of Schuey and Captain Allen, beating (‘wupping’?) the youngster pairing of Ollie and Mark by 3&2. It was certainly fun watching the fun!

The Championship Sunday saw us leaving the overnight hotel at 6am as dawn appeared through the scattered clouds on the way to the course. There, we found very different conditions from on the previous day: a flat calm instead of a blustery northerly wind, the course coated in a heavy dew and the morning mist rising steam-like from the pond in front of the tenth tee.

If you care to look at our combined score after the first round, 449, you can calculate that matters did not go quite ‘according to plan’, as it left us in 6th place. But that only served to goad our players to accept the challenge of the gauntlet thrown down. Thus, the second round saw four significantly lower scores: Jim by 5 shots to card a one over par; Ollie by 6 shots a one under par score; Lewis by 10 shots(!) to three under par; and, Charlie by 2 shots to card a 68, thus achieving an outstanding combined score of 138, six under par for the day; that nearly won him the best 36-hole score, losing out by only one stroke to Harrogate’s Jack Ward. The team’s valiant effort enabled them to win the Runner-Up Trophy, which our President, Alan Marriott, proudly received from the Chair of YIDU, Stuart Dawes, with acclamation. Congratulations to all our players, an encouragingly fitting end to our season!

The YIDU 6-Man Team Championship Runner-Up Trophy winners

In conclusion, Captain Neil comments as follows: “this 2019 season has been a challenging one for our Union when it came to team selection. This has highlighted a possible need to grow the pool of talent that is within the Union’s affiliated clubs. All the players that have represented the Union this year have done so with great pride and enthusiasm, and I cannot thank them enough for their support and commitment. The YIDU league results were inconsistent, something that Sheffield isn’t accustomed to. Both players and officials are keen to rectify this when the 2020 season gets underway. This was fully evident at the 6-Man championship: the team performed very well finishing runners-up to Harrogate with a score that in previous years would have been good enough to win. That augurs well for next year!”

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