challenge matches

The Challenge Cup

2011 Challenge Match versus Friends Golf Society
Wednesday 11th May 2011
Horsley Lodge Golf Club, Derby

The society plays an annual Challenge Cup match again the Friends Golf Society, which is played over 36 holes, fourball-betterball in the morning and singles in the afternoon.

The second annual fixture with the Friends Society who had selected Horsley Lodge as this year’s venue, took place on 11th May 2011 with the BUNGS seeking revenge for last year’s reversal.

Unknown to us that the Friends Society had played their last Golf day here three weeks prior to our match as preparation for their strong team.

The BUNGS team was as follows:
Dave Grubb (Society & Team Captain & qualified from League Cup position)
Simon Hayward (qualified from League Cup position)
Mike Fox (qualified from League Cup position)
Phil Latham (qualified from League Cup position)
Karl Hughes (qualified from League Cup position)
Graham Thorpe (qualified from League Cup position)
Brian Keates (qualified from League Cup position)
Graham Bilsland (qualified from League Cup position)
Jeff Sackett (qualified from League Cup position)
John Mansell (qualified from League Cup position)
Adrian Marchant (wildcard)
Bill Ball (wildcard)

Morning fourball-betterballs

Club Captain David Grubb was pondering over his morning pairings with a cup of coffee and bacon baguette (what diet?) when the BUNGS team arrived on a sunny but windy morning. Friends fielded seven players from last year and the BUNGS had six players returning for revenge!

Morning score  -  Friends 3.5  /  BUNGS 2.5

The opening match had a very close game with Bill Ball playing a leading role to gain the BUNGS first point. The Bungs team of Simon & Dave were leading 3 up with 4 to play but finished all square in the second match. Similar story in the third match with Phil & Graham 4 up after 8 holes were pulled back to all square, then won the 16th before Andy Wassell (Friends) chipped in for birdie at the 17th to square the match. At the 18th BUNGS were outdriven & lost the last hole. Vic Holier (Friends) the squirrel slayer finished his round with 2 broken clubs, putter snapped in half after 6 holes and his 3 wood wrapped around a tree on the 13th fairway!

Adrian & Karl triumphed in the fourth match for BUNGS taking our second point by 1 hole. The fifth & sixth pairings both lost by the same scores of 6&4 with both teams struggling in the windy conditions and trying to keep the Friends society in distance. With 12 points to play for in the afternoon, BUNGS now had a chance of a victory, so after soup and sandwiches at lunchtime, it was off to the first tee for the singles.

Afternoon score  -  Friends 4.5  /  BUNGS 7.5

Overall Score  -  Friends 8.0  /  BUNGS 10.0

So the recovery from BUNGS happened this time with sterling performances led by captain Grubb who came back in his match to win the last 4 holes to triumph 1up and then jumped into his chariot, sorry buggy, to rally his troops. Another comeback came from Mike Fox who came back from 3 down to triumph 3 & 2 against Vic Holier who by this time I suspect had very few clubs left in his bag to play with! Bill Ball led from the front again and tried to encourage Graham Bilsland to his hard won half point in the game of the day. Solid performances from Phil, Adrian, Brian and Simon recorded the necessary wins, while Jeff Sackett was heard to be muttering something about “the USA don’t play matchplay enough”, keep practicing Jeff!

After the meal, BUNGS Captain, David Grubb, accepted the trophy from Friends with a smug smile and issued the challenge to Friends Golf Society for 2012 and a  triumphant team went home with a job well done.

Competition structure

An annual match between the two societies played over 36 holes, morning will be fourball-betterball matchplay and the afternoon will be singles matchplay.

Each year one society will challenge, and the challengers will be deemed the ‘away’ team. Friends challenged BUNGS in 2010, so BUNGS were at ‘home’ and booked the venue, BUNGS have challenged Friends in 2011, so Friends are at ‘home’ and will book the venue etc.

There will be 12 players per team, the top ten from the previous year’s League Cup plus two wildcards (to be decided by the committee). Where anyone in the League Cup top ten is unavailable to play, then preference will go to 11th place etc.