It was a close match between Richmond Park and Wexham Park ‘C’, with RPGC posting 218 stableford points to Wexham Park’s 221 points. Our 3 home team pairs scored a combined 114 points, 10 more than Wexham’s away team managed on the Prince’s course; however our away team were outscored by 13 points at a shortened, tight Wexham course, which wouldn’t have suited the ‘long hitters’ that we sent there. Wexham admitted that they brought all their long hitters to Richmond Park and it looks like their strategy paid off. So we’ll try again next year.

After a bye in the 1st round, the club played this 2nd round men’s greensomes match home & away against Hoebridge on a lovely warm and sunny day. The overall result was a narrow victory for Richmond Park 220 points : 218 points but it took over 4 hours after play finished for the result to be confirmed/agreed! Next round is against Wexham Park.

The 3 pairs at Richmond Park (Brendan Sullivan & Bernie McDermott, Kerry Sargeant & Alan King and Uli Katte & Richard Owen) teed off an hour earlier than those at Hoebridge. All of the Richmond Park pairs outscored their Hoebridge playing partners on the Prince’s course and together amassed what we believed to be a 16 points advantage. Was this enough ? There was a long wait to see how our away team (Roger Rojas & Mike Shabani, Ross Hood & Pete Malla and Kim Chaffart & Tamas Ladacs) had got on. News trickled through from team captain Roger that “it might be a draw” and copies of the RP cards and back 9 countback scores were requested. Together all the information was ‘audited’ by Roger and the Hoebridge captain and it was found that Hoebridge had mis-calculated some of their team handicaps both home and away, resulting in a 2 points swing to Richmond Park, who won by 18 points at home and lost by only 16 points away. Phew!

This year’s second round match in the Clapham Common Shield and Ellis Cup was played against Perivale Park golf club. In a high scoring game, Perivale were the winners 244 vs 226.  Incredibly high scores were posted by the 3 Perivale ‘home’ pairs over two laps of their 9 holes course : 44, 44 and 48 points, so although the Richmond Park home team were a total of 11 points up on Perivale’s away team, it was just not enough.  In fact, Perivale’s total team score of 244 was considerably higher than any score posted in the games played for the 2021Clapham competition!

Richmond Park won their first round match in this year’s Clapham Common Shield and Ellis Cup match against High Elms golf club. It was an extremely close match, 213 points each, with Richmond winning by 7 points on the back 9 countback.

It was a mild but cloudy day, with a few spots of rain over the closing holes for the away team of Jay Barker, Roger Rojas, Kim Chaffart, Henry L-B, Brian Ransom and Richard Owen. The High Elms course had largely wide generous fairways but the greens were small, sloped and incredibly slow, in fact all RPGC players had big trouble hitting the putts hard enough to reach the holes. Given the tricky greens and resulting 3-putts, the RPGC scores of 34, 34 and 37 points were respectable but it left us 10 points adrift of the High Elms home team (105 vs 115).

The home team of Uli Katte, Andy Watson, Justin Wildman, Brian McMahon, Ryan Jones and James Parker took longer to complete their matches on Duke’s and it was a nervous wait. All of our home team pairings scored 36 points (total 108) and it seemed that they had won their leg by 9 points, however it was noted that one of the High Elms pairs had claimed a handicap of 20, which should have been 19, so the match was tied.

Countback calculations revealed that all of the High Elms away team pairings had struggled on the back 9 of Duke’s, so RPGC won on countback.

RPGC team narrowly lost this first round match 209 to 206 points