Royal Porthcawl - Thursday 2nd October, 2025
What a day !
What a performance !
A team fully buying into the spirit of 'let's go out, enjoy the day and what will be, will be” went out, enjoyed their day and won the cup !
Beating Old Malvernians on countback; with scores of 127 points for our three best pairs, we were comfortably ahead of Old Cheltonians in third place with 119 points.
Pair 1 Martin LIKE 16.8
Tom ATKIN 6.8 43 pts
Pair 2 Robert CALCATERRA 9.6
Anthony BALLANCE 13.7 45 pts
Pair 3 James THOMAS 5.77
Matt SHERVINGTON-JONES 10.6 37pts
Pair 4 Gareth POWELL 1.2
Kevin NOBLE 12.5 39 pts
Drawn to play with Old Malvernians, we went out with a reminder that we weren't playing directly against our pairings and to just enjoy the round on a nice, still day on a beautiful course.
And we duly did, with each group playing the round in a great spirit, encouraging a fantastic quality of better-ball pairs golf out of each other. The dovetailing was brilliant.
Dovetailing was always going to be key, with the pairings picked with this in mind. The (more than) steady lower handicappers, hopefully, being bolstered by the higher handicappers ‘coming in’ occasionally (or a lot !). So it proved, especially with Rob’s 28 points dovetailing neatly with Anthony’s 32 points and, perhaps less spectacularly, but as crucially, my meagre tally coinciding exactly with Gareth’s rare misplacements for our 39 points (no need to fret about that 15-incher, Gareth; I’m pretty sure I made one of my putts for points on that hole!). Martin spoke of a similar story with Tom, and James and Matt seemed to match each other nicely.
Out in the last pair, I collected the cards from a very pleasantly surprised, very happy and quietly hopeful team. It took a while for me to get out of the bar to go looking for the Old Malvernian captain to sign our cards. A last-minute check with him saw us be one point less than we thought, which dented my optimism a bit; knowing we lost by a single point two years ago. A hint from the pro shop official scorer that we might be the leaders in the clubhouse so far, raised it again; but there were still quite a few groups to hand their cards in.
The announcement was made after (a very agreeable) lunch. The announcing of 119 points as third place confirmed we had done more than the least hoped for target of ‘mid-table respectability’. The countback announcement was a bit tense but, believing James and Matt’s 37 points was better than the Malvernians least scoring pair and knowing that Rob and Anthony’s 45 points couldn’t be beaten, we were hopeful. It’s usually ‘the hope that kills you’ in defeat but, on this occasion, that was to be for the Old Malvernian’s to deal with, not us.
The countback decider had been left to the club professional, who determined it was to be the team with the highest scoring pair; which was smashed by the highest score of the day by Rob and Anthony, for which they won a bottle of nice bubbly to go with the box of Pro V1’s we each got as winners. Queue happy celebrations.
What an unexpected and fantastic end to a thoroughly enjoyable day ! Queue happy celebrations.
It’s the first time in 26 years that Old Breconians have won the cup; so, I suppose it takes the pressure off us for the next 25 years; though, wouldn’t it be nice to successfully retain the cup next year!
There was more good news for Old Breconian golfers on the same day; Llyr Raw-Rees, who had to, unfortunately, miss out on Harris Cup selection, went on to win the Longest Drive competition at a charity golf day hosted by Challenge Aid at Burhill Golf Club. Brilliant! Well done Llyr.
