Cooden Beach GC

After bacon rolls and beverages, the pairings were announced by the Cooden match manager Tony Hunt, who also dished out home-made sausage rolls to everyone for mid round sustenance. The Cooden Captain was in the first group nursing a big hangover from the previous night’s excess. The phrase beware the injured golfer needs extending to include the half-cut golfer as long range putts were rolled in with annoying regularity. In fact, after his sausage roll had kicked in, he went off a bit, but his partner Tony Hunt came to the fore to close out the first rubber 3 & 2.

Match number 2 saw Martlets Hon. Sec. Gregory West accompany new member Stewart Tippler, they proved to be a perfect combination as they forged ahead in their match superbly, only for the competitive nature of the Cooden duo to take the tie down the last. The Martlets pair were only toying with their opponents though and won the 18th to level the overall match score 1-1.

The Martlets continued to hit back with Cooden’s home advantage nullified by Ronni Schrevel’s mastery of his home course, complimenting Charlie Hartridge’s canny knack of when to lay up, to put the visitors 2 / 1 ahead.

Unfortunately, the match score was levelled up again as Nigel Cook and Mark Stevenson came out the wrong side of their match against a dogged Cooden twosome.

With the match poised delicately at 2 / 2 with 2 to play the tactics of putting our very strong combinations out towards the rear proved a master stroke.

Steve Hartridge & Mick Richards ended up worthy winners displaying nerves of steel in match 5 meaning that the Martlets could not lose overall.

The final pairing of Tim Sneath and Stuart Avern played so magnificently that one of their opponents Chris Nash, (not the ex-Sussex cricketer but his uncle), spent the afternoon bemoaning the fact that the Cooden golfers were 5 under gross at the end, but were still on the end of a 4 / 3 drubbing.

Another fine overall victory for the Martlets was followed by lunch with the obligatory wine supplied by the guests, where a toast was made to a long established Cooden member and highly respected ex-Sussex Martlet Anthony Shuttleworth who sadly passed away a few days before the match.

Martin Phillimore: Match Manager