By Brian Viner
Northcliffe’s annual match against the Press Golfing Society has seen some humdingers down the decades, but none have reached the heights of this year’s tussle – 1300ft above sea level at Kington GC in Herefordshire, the highest course in England.
We began the two-day event on April 1, always a risky date in the calendar and so it proved as Northcliffe lost six matches in the Greensomes. The Two Phils (Woods and Barber) won 4&2 while Lisa Heywood and John Wellington did even better, humbling a PGS pair containing a certain Ian McIlgorm by 5&4. But by the end of April Fools’ Day those were our only points on the board. We were 2-6 down. Barring a near-miracle, a devastating defeat beckoned.
Yet near-miracles do sometimes happen. Improbable as it sounds, given how convivial the previous evening had been at the Burton Hotel down the hill in the small border town of Kington, Northcliffe got off to a thunderous start in the second-day Fourballs, winning the first three matches to reduce the deficit to a single point. In the first of these, rookie Andy Gregory and NGS captain Brian Viner were three down after six and never up in the match until the final putt, winning by one hole.
That seemed to set the tone for the doughtiest of fightbacks. In the second match out, Lee Terry and Barry Theobald also nicked it by one hole. Then Felix Duckworth and Jon Worsnop won handsomely 3&2. Phil Barber and Jayne Burden prevailed 2&1, while Will Flint and John Wellington romped home 3&2. Halves for Garth Burden/Ian McGowan, and Keith Cottington/Phil Woods, meant that as the final match came down the 18th, still very much alive, we led by a point overall. It had already been an astonishing turnaround. As they made their way towards the green from the elevated tee, buffeted by a keen easterly breeze, could Lisa Heywood and Nick Ratcliffe get us over the line?
In the event they didn’t quite, but Evan Samuel, the opposition’s token gritty Antipodean, had to hole a nervy two-footer to close out that last match 1-up and ensure a 8-8 tie. That, alas, meant that as holders the PGS retained the Northcliffe Challenge Cup. But it was a truly epic encounter: the outcome of a two-day 32-player match determined by the very last putt on the very last green.
Gratifyingly for me as the match organiser and a Kington member, who has long been downright evangelical about the course’s unique quirks, charms and virtues, everyone was hugely complimentary about the place. Sustained spring sunshine didn’t hurt, either, while the stiff easterly set a few challenges to which the Northcliffe team all rose, in some cases magnificently. In particular, hats off (easily done in that wind) to John Wellington and Phil Barber, who both finished with a 100 per cent record.
Photographs by Ian McIlgorm
