The annual Town vs Country fixture was played at Amberly Golf Club yesterday. With some initial showers soon passing, the day was played in brisk but fine conditions with the course in good shape.
With the event being played in a new trial format in 2023 the opening qualifying round commenced with a shotgun start at 8am with 4-man groupings scattered across the course. Under the day’s format, the opening round stroke scores were used to determine the seeding and in turn match ups for the afternoon match play games with the top-ranked players in each category (Town Seniors, Country Seniors, Town Masters, and Country Masters) to be matched against each other with the results determining the Town vs Country title.
There were some impressive scores in the qualifying round with Cooper Moore finishing as the top seed for the Town seniors carding a 3 under par 69 with Tom Lee also shooting 69. Dean Harvey secured the second seed position for the Country seniors with his 2 under par 70. However, the most impressive qualifying round of the day was completed by Pegasus player Oscar Cadenhead who recorded a course record-equaling round of 64, 8 under par to be the top seed for the Country seniors. In the master’s division, Andrew Dufton was the best finishing Town player with a 76 with Alisdair Reid topping the Country masters’ players with a round of 75.
Into the afternoon match play rounds we went with some intriguing match-ups. In the seniors the top of the top-of-the-order match’s saw Oscar Cadenhead take on Cooper Moore, Tom Lee vs Dean Harvey and Sam McGill take on clubmate Dominic Brettkelly. Cooper Moore (Town) was able to get over the line 1 Up in the battle of the top seeds while both Dean Harvey (Country) and Sam McGill (Town) were able to get the job done both by the margin of 2/1. In the other 9 senior match-ups Town managed to win the majority to secure an eventual 7.5 – 4.5 victory.
In the master’s competition, the top seed matches included Andrew Dufton vs Alisdair Reid, Leon Yee vs Dave Inkson, and David Grater vs Simon Edwards. Honors were shared at the top with Dufton and Reid halving, while Yee (Town) and Edwards (Country) were able to prevail 3/2 and 2 Up respectively. Overall however, in the remaining 5 matches Town proved to strong coming away with an overall master’s victory 5.5 – 2.5.
Also included on the day was an opportunity for some Canterbury Juniors to also play as part of a wider trial event. Etienne Collier, Otis Holland, Liam Keegan, and Louis Edwards all took part in this with Collier and Holland prevailing as top seeds. The latter went on to win the match play game in the afternoon 6/5.
Our thanks again go to the team at Amberly Golf Club for their great hospitality on the day.
Full results can be viewed – HERE.
