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EG County Seniors Championship - Midlands Qualifier

This year’s Midlands qualifying event (aka the County 6s) was held at Moseley GC on Tuesday 4th August over 36 holes medal play. The best 5 out of 6 scores from the morning’s round and best 5 out of 6 afternoon’s scores were to count towards the team overall score. This was the first year of reverting to 36 holes in one day rather than playing over 2 days and would be a test of endurance! My selected team were:

John Lawrence (Sutton Coldfield GC)

Karl Smith (Handsworth GC)

Mark Warner (Coventry Hearsall GC)

Roger Neale (The Welcombe GC)

Steve Creed (Stratford-on-Avon GC)

Warren Bladon (Kenilworth GC)

Travelling Reserve

Phil Murphy (Handsworth GC)

Fortunately, we had played Moseley the month before in our league match against Worcestershire. All 7 of the squad had good memories as we had a stunning comeback victory there!

We had a practice round the day before the event and were greeted with a golf course, like most others in the Midlands, which was suffering from the extended drought conditions. The fairways were even firmer than when we played the month before and the rough was sparse, meaning balls could easily run off into problem areas. Keeping the ball in play and avoiding any big numbers on holes was definitely going to be the order of the day! Prior to arriving at Moseley my view was that a target score for each player should be 76, but after the practice round I reassessed that and felt keeping all the counting 5 scores below 80 would give a competitive team score.

With all my preparation done and two large cool boxes filled with drinks/provisions parked up on the 1st and 10th tees, it was now down to my players to perform! The morning round saw some blustery but pleasant conditions. As players were coming round after their first 9 holes it became apparent that the front 9 was playing harder than the back 9 by, in the region of, 4 shots – information I shared with those who started from the 1st but I kept to myself from those who started on the 10th!

After the morning round was completed, it was looking like any one of 5 counties were still in with a chance of victory, but we held a slight advantage. The team scores for the top 5 were:

375 – Warwickshire

383 – Shropshire & Herefordshire

384 - Lincolnshire

386 – Worcestershire

386 – Staffordshire

Using a good old football team talk, I told my players it was 0-0 at half time!

The afternoon saw the breeze pick up and swirling through the trees. We also experienced something not seen for a couple of months – a squally rain shower! These conditions made the disparity of scoring between the front and back 9s even greater. Going into the last 9 holes we could see some fatigued players from all of the counties but news was positive from most of our players – again aiming to break 80. As the players started to come in our player’s scores were looking strong as Steve, Warren and Mark posted great rounds. Reports from the course were that Karl was doing okay but John and Roger were slightly struggling.

We watched the leaderboard as the individual scores were coming in and we were trying to calculate what would happen if other counties had a good score to replace their highest score in the afternoon! John was in the last group playing with a Moseley player who, with a good score, could push us into second place.

Fortunately, John had a better score than the Worcestershire player and we knew we had won the team event! The finishing team scores for the top 5 were:

754 – Warwickshire

756 – Worcestershire

763 - Shropshire & Herefordshire

773 – Staffordshire

776 – Lincolnshire

Even better news was that Steve (fresh off his victory in the Belgium Seniors) had won the individual prize with scores of 70, 72. Warren was second in the individual (74, 72) and Mark was 7th (76, 73).

We now move on to represent the Midlands in the County Finals at Trentham GC on 6th-8th October against the qualifiers from the other 3 regions.

My thanks to all my players for all their efforts on the day, Phil Murphy (for constantly providing updates from the course) and the rest of the support team on the day – Mark Reynolds, Stuart Bloxham, Pete Clarke, Rob Soen, Martin Kirkbride, Deb Reynolds, James Lamond, Graham Barton and Tim Cooley.

Neville Gardner

Warwickshire Seniors Captain