The final of the 2015 Knockout

Foursomes was played on a beau-

tiful day at South Beds Golf Club,

although the weather did spoil

itself when the rain came on the

17th hole where the match was

completed.

It was a great match between Sue

Wade & Cally Hawker of Chal-

grave Manor G.C. and Sharon

Stevens & Caroline Matthew of

Bedford & County G.C. with many

holes halved and never more than

2 holes in it.

Sue and Cally were the first to

break the deadlock and were 2

up after 10 holes but Sharon and

Caroline won the next 2 holes to

take the match back to all square,

Caroline playing a great shot to

only 3 feet from the pin on the

short par 3 twelfth hole.

The match, which was played in a

great spirit all round, was con-

cluded with a half on the 17th

hole giving a 2 & 1win to Sharon

and Caroline.

From all of us here at B & C GC.

Many, many congratulations to

both Caroline and Sharon.

Bedfordshire Champions

VOLUME 1, ISSUE 6

OCTOBER 2015

On Target

The Monthly Newsletter of

Bedford & County Golf Club

Points of Interest

Charles Biswell takes over the

catering operations

Adam Butler was ‘privileged to

be part of the team’ at Woburn

Nick Cunningham gains his first

victory on the Jamega Tour

Inside this issue:

Lady Captain’s Report 2

Competition winners 2

Catering 2

British Masters—Adam

Butler

3

Nick Cuningham 4/5

Caroline Matthews (left)

Sharon Stevens (right)

A comment from the Bedfordshire Ladies County Golf Association website:

“Congratulations to you both Caroline and Sharon. A great partnership, and true rep-

resentation of what the competition is about......played throughout in great sportman-

ship. Worthy winners of the 2015 trophy .”

By Ali Oakley on Friday, October 23, 2015

Page 2 ON TARGET

Lady Captain’s Report Glynis Winrow

On the 30th August we had a Mixed match against Thetford Golf Club which Beds and County won 4—3. We have a good rapport with them as we joined with them for both of our centenary years and they presented us with the cup we now play for.

On the 10th September we had our Ladies Autumn Open - a 3 Ball Alli-ance with 18 teams taking part. It was a lovely sunny day and every-

one enjoyed Pimms and homemade cakes half way round.

The winners were Aspley Guise with 85 points. Yvonne Richards made a comment in her victory speech that one of their team eagled the 18th off a 32 handicap, scoring 6 points that certainly made a difference to their score.

Second with 80 points was Redbourn and 3rd with 79 on c/b was The Bedford.

The raffle raised £204 for my charity ‘Beds Garden Carers for people with disabilities.’

Congratulations

themselves. Last year we split the catering into the daytime cafe style operation and the larger functions - which have been very satisfactorily han-dled by Charles Biswell and his team.

From the 22nd October Charles has expanded his operations and now handles all our catering requirements. He will also run his other busi-ness from our kitchen - he supplies lunches to children at day nurseries—so will be with us from 8am, ready to look after members from 10am onwards each day. He has exciting plans for increasing what is on offer at our club.

Those of you that have ex-perienced his food know how good it is so please support him and his family in every-thing they do.

Charles has been appointed on a franchise basis, and that will allow Steve Vinni-combe - in his General Man-ager role - the opportunity to concentrate on other mat-ters.

Many congratulations to the winners of three re-cently completed club

competitions:

Stan Horsburgh Four-somes—Leo Conroy and

Paul Grant

Keeling Scratch Trophy—

Ben Jones

Club Challenge—Neil Hodgkins and

Albert Naude

Those of you who attended the last forum will have heard that Wayne, the club chef, has left us to take up an appointment at St John’s Hospice. It is important that members should know that Wayne was very happy with us, and had no intention of leaving, but St John’s is very personal to him and he wanted me to make it clear to members that he would not have left our club for any other reason. Thank you Wayne, and all the best for the future. As always in these situations, the Board considers all the various options that present

Catering John Anderson

Page 3 ON TARGET

British Masters at Woburn

As most members will know, our Course Manag-er, Adam Butler, was privi-leged to be part of the team preparing the Mar-quess course at Woburn for the recently revived British Masters. These are Adam’s reflections on his experiences:

‘The big day had arrived, I had always wanted to be part of a course setup for a major tournament and gain some knowledge into how these major tourna-ments run so smoothly. My alarm went off at 4.10 am on the Tuesday and this was going to be the trend for a very exhaust-ing but enjoyable week. I pulled up to the Dukes and Duchess shed at 4.55 for a 5am meet I couldn't be-lieve the amount of cars on site. I then proceeded across and met with a few of the guys who I had met before. There was a real buzz

between the guys even at that time of day. I then got a strong coffee and wait-ed for further instructions.

John Clarke, the Cours-es’Manager, then intro-duced himself and the team and talked us through the week. We were partnered with a Woburn Greenkeeper and off we went in the dark at

5.30am. My job for the week was hand-cutting the short game area, the put-ting green and the 17th and 18th greens; this would take me around 3 hours each day. We would then return to the sheds by 9.15am and meet with the other 86 Greenkeepers. We were then on duty until around 5pm. We were all given a hole at a certain time; I had the 16th which meant that if there were any sudden downpours I would be re-quired to make the green playable for the tour pros. At 5pm we would have two teams of 30 guys hand-divoting fairways and the Woburn guys would carry out a full course cut. This would be completed in 2 hours and I would then ar-rive home at around 7.15pm.

It was such an enjoyable week and I have gained some knowledge into how things can work on such a huge scale with the right team and the skill which we Greenkeepers pride our-selves on. I would like to thank Wo-burn and John Clarke for this opportunity. We even had Ian Poulter cook our breakfast one morning when he visited the shed and thanked us for our efforts.’

Myself in the blue cap

caught on Sky TV

Myself cutting with Robert

Karlsson working on his

game

10 fairway mowers ready

for the day

Matthew Fitzpatrick, the

winner of the 2015

British Masters with all

the Greenkeepers

Ian Poulter serving

breakfast to the Green-

keepers

Page 4 ON TARGET

Q: What was the strongest point of your game this year?

A. This has to be my putting. I may not hole too many of what I’d class as “long putts” but from 10 feet and in I am usually very solid. I tend to spend 60% of my practice time putting though so I would expect it to be my strongest part of my game as for me it’s by far the most important part of any golfers game.

Q: ..and the weakest part of your game this year?

I don’t feel like I have a spe-cific area of my game that is weak but if I had to choose one specific part it would be chips/pitches between 20-35 yards. Again it is just a case of working on these over the winter then maintaining it. Q: What has been your most memorable hole? I’m going to narrow this question down to three holes: 1. 6th hole at Dubai Creek GC where the championship tee box is built on a platform out into

the creek and is a few yards bigger than a tennis court. This obviously bought the creek much more into play all down the right 2. The 10th tee at Royal Cinque Ports GC, not so much for the hole itself but it was my opening tee shot for final open qualifying so the thought of me being one good day’s golf away from playing in The Open just made it a good hole for me. 3. The 18th hole at Leather-head GC. Again not so much for the hole itself as it was a standard 210 yard par 3 but I had to birdie it to win and lipped out for a hole in one and leaving myself an easy 2 foot birdie putt.

Q; What was your favourite course of the year?

Dubai Creek Golf & Yacht club. When the slowest the greens get all week are 11.6 on the stimp metre and they are smooth you know you’re at a good track

Q: Best Experience?

A: Best experience is a mix-ture of two events. First of all it has to be going to Bo-gogno in Italy for European Tour School. Sadly, I left myself too much work to do in my final round and ended up going in the opposite direction. But I only took

Q: How do you feel your year has gone?

A: I have been saying all year that I haven’t felt as if I have been playing amazing golf and haven’t felt like it has been an overly successful year but when I look back at my results and stats it has been a good year and my stats are all moving forward and improving.

Q: What have you learned about yourself?

I need to be more efficient within my overall game. So in other words everything needs to be slightly im-proved; get approach shots slightly closer, hole a putt or two putts more a round on average etc.

Q: How do you take what you’ve learned and apply it into your game? It’s pretty simple…. up my work rate. I work hard on my game as it is but I need to work on more specific areas, to make my practice more effective and to use more pressured games when I’m practising.

Nick Cunningham’s Year

Teeing off on the 10th at Royal Cinque Ports in Open

Qualifying

positives from the week and the best part of all is there isn’t much work for me to do to compete on tour so I just have to keep working at it.

Secondly, it has to be win-ning back in July. After a first round of -1, I was in a good position to move forward and take control of the tournament, which I did early in my second round after birdieing 3 of my opening 5 holes. I then proceeded to drop 4 shots in my next 5 holes to drop way back.

After turning to Sophie, who has caddied for me most of this year, telling her that I need to stop messing around and win this tournament, I finished birdie, birdie, par, eagle, birdie, birdie to win by 1. Knowing I had to birdie the 210 yard par 3 last was never going to be the easi-est of finishes but I man-aged to hit a 5 iron to 2 feet—that seemed to do the trick! Q: Worst experience? Having to withdraw in my last event over in Dubai. I don’t like to give up on a golf course no matter how badly I play but mentally and a bit physically I was absolutely drained. I’d been training pretty hard over there to get myself in good shape for qualifying school in early October.

I have a pretty strict re-gime that Alan Holl gives me and updates to suit each period of the year I’m in but I just did more than I was told to do which took its toll and ended up with me playing only one round and then having to with-draw through illness in the second and then take a few rest days before I flew

to Italy.

Q: Most memorable shot? Holing a 52 degree wedge from 112 yards in my sec-ond round of European Tour Qualifying School, then running around with Steve Vinnicombe.

Q: What are your aims for next year?

Having played fairly well at Tour School I have the op-portunity, if I’m lucky, to get between 2-6 Challenge Tour starts so my main aim is to play well in those. I also want to go back to European Tour School and progress further within

that. Giving myself another year’s experience and with improvements I feel I could find myself with a European Tour Card this time next year.

Below are Nick’s Results. Each event is held over 2/3/4 day with the fields ranging from between 80 – 140

Results:

April:

Machynys links GC - 2nd Royal St Georges - 5th

May: Dummer Golf Club - 41st The Bedfordshire Golf Club - 29th

June The Shire Golf Club - 12th The Players Golf Club – WD Calcot Park GC – 10th Open Qualifying Stage 1 (The Buckinghamshire GC) – 9th

July Open Qualifying final (Royal Cinque Ports GC) – 25th Leatherhead GC – 1st Telford GC 12th

August The Bedfordshire GC - 9th Luton Hoo GC -9th Reading GC – 27th Enfield GC – 16th Bedford and County Golf Club VIP Event - 2nd

September Dubai Creek Open – 44th Ascorp Golf Citizen Abi Dhabi Open – MC Shaikh Maktoum Dubai Open - WD

October

European Tour Qualifying School – 54th

Page 5 ON TARGET

Nick and Sophie after winning at

Leatherhead