County Team Championships 2021
This years County Team Championships were held from 11th to 13th October at Handsworth Golf Club in the West Midlands. It is a traditional well established parkland course steeped in history. We were all looking forward to a near normal tournament with 16 teams taking part from 10 counties, with several counties entering two teams. With the new WHS in operation this year for the first time the association has to rely on the host club to help with set up and input of all the scores. Lee the head pro was most helpful and this worked extremely well and certainly made my job as organiser much easier.
Day 1: The Greensome competition was played in beautiful sunshine and some great scores were returned, with Catrin Russell and Kay Kearton from Derbyshire winning with a score of 41 points. Players did comment on the course playing long but also how they'd enjoyed the challenge and were looking forward to the following two days.
Most teams returned to the comfort of the hotel waiting for good weather in the morning. We were all excited at the prospect of 2 medal rounds over the next 2 days.
On Tuesday we played the South. All our foursomes partnerships were new. However we had a resounding 3-0 win in the morning. Unfortunately we only managed a 1/2 point in the six singles, courtesy of Helen Lowe, however all the games were close and could have gone either way. On Wednesday undaunted against the North, we played the same foursomes partners and again had a resounding 3-0 win in the morning. It looked promising at one time in the afternoon, but we only managed one win, courtesy of Sophie Beardsall. On Thursday against Scotland we won the foursomes 2-1 and with Sophie winning the top match against the Scottish champion in the afternoon we won 4 matches and halved one, with nail-biting putts for Marcella and Sarah on the 18th.