With confidence high after our excellent win against Norfolk in the EASL, CAGU Seniors took a trip to the seaside to play in the Southern Counties Seniors Foursomes Qualifier at Sheringham GC. We faced highly competitive county seniors teams from Bedfordshire, Suffolk, together with home county Norfolk, all vying to get to the championship final at Ely GC in September. With some of our key players now available we took a strong team to Sheringham and there was a good feeling in the camp as this event uses the format of two 18 hole foursomes matches over the day. We have had a bit of trouble the last few years in the 9 hole foursomes first round league format so a return to the full 18 holes was most welcome.
We were greeted with a glorious sunny and breezy day at Sheringham and the CAGU seniors didn’t hang around before making good progress in all our matches. Kevin Diss and Craig Russell were in a close battle against Norfolk’s top pair of Jon Baker-Odin and Norfolk Captain Iain Reid. Terry Ryan and Keith Moore edged ahead early in their game and although Paul Izzard and Billy McQueeny had slipped a few holes on the front nine, our last two pairings of Ken Parsons and David Hayns and Doug Bottomley and Graham Goodman both lead at the turn with some excellent foursomes play. As the morning rounds got to the sharp end, news came back that Kevin and Craig had lost on the last in a titanic struggle and although Paul and Billy had also been beaten, the team were still in a good place winning in all the final three games. Points quickly arrived to get us right back into the event with a 5/3 victory for Ken and David and a 4/3 victory for Doug and Graham. The final CAGU morning game out on the course was Terry and Keith and after Terry had hit a great drive into the middle of the fairway, with the captain looking on, it was left to Keith who hit a great shot into the 17th to seal the victory 2/1. A great fightback from the team left us in the lead with Norfolk on 3pts, Bedfordshire had 2 1/2 pts and Suffolk 1 1/2 pts.
The team was all business in the afternoon, we were in a very good place but there was still much to be done. Kevin and Craig were out to avenge their one hole loss in the morning and went hunting early in the round. Some great golf got them in a strong position at the end of nine leading 2up. Paul and Billy, who were determined to put the morning round behind them, again showed the spirit in the team and battled hard to get their noses in front in a close encounter against former CAGU player Andy Stubbs and partner Gareth Shorley. Our final three games all went to the turn with one hole in it either way. So the “back nine on Sunday” started (even though it was a Thursday) with Kevin and Craig going into “refuse to lose mode” and they secured our first afternoon point, not to be outdone, Paul and Billy showed a steely nerve to finish victorious on the last hole. With the feeling at halftime that if we could again get three points in the afternoon we would be very hard to beat, we were suddenly getting very very close to winning! Terry and Keith had been in a ding dong battle all afternoon, however, despite falling behind at one stage both just kept playing great foursomes golf and again finished their game off on the 17th for a 3/1 victory. Realisation had now crept in that we were on the cusp of winning, and again with the captain watching, Doug finished the day with a magnificent exclamation point hitting a 7 iron to 1 1/2 feet at the 17th to secure our 4th afternoon point and victory for CAGU seniors.
Just a truly great effort by everyone, I think we took the other teams by surprise with the quality of our play but with this team I always felt we had a very decent chance plus we avenged two heavy defeats by Bedfordshire and Suffolk! A very very proud and emotional captain accepted the Southern Counties Senior Foursomes trophy on behalf of all the CAGU Senior Golfers and as a result we now go forward to the final at Ely on September 19th. We are setting good standards now and we have to build on this and keep battling for every league point available for the rest of this season.
CAGU Seniors rocked up to the beech and took the silverware home!