Club Matches
Club Matches
Hawtree Trophy Round 3
The Richmond Park ‘B’ team captained by Veronica progressed through to this year’s Area Finals with a win against Farnham Park. Unfortunately the Richmond Park ‘A’ team lost to Wexham Park, who now play Richmond Park ‘B’ in the Area Finals.
Clapham Common Round 2
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!
Kelso Hamilton Round 3
Richmond Park won their away match against Woodcote Park golf club in the 3rd round of the Surrey Golf Kelso Hamilton 4BBB knockout competition.
The Woodcote Park golf course, near Coulsdon, was in wonderful condition with many trees and bunkers and large, fast, undulating greens. The match started in glorious warm sunshine, rapidly deteriorated to 3 hours of persistent rain, with the sun re-appearing for the final 2 holes. It was an extremely close match, never more than 2 holes in it, and the Richmond Park team of Richard Owen and Uli Katte never in-front until the 19th hole had been played.
Hawtree Trophy Round 2
The Richmond Park ‘B Team’, captained by Veronica away and Cheryl at home, won their 2nd round match against Wexham Park A by the tightest of margins (back 9 countback after stableford points scores were level). They play Farnham Park B in the next round.
NAPGC Hawtree Trophy
The Richmond Park A team played their 2nd Round mixed greensomes match against Huntswood B in glorious warm Spring sunshine. Overall it was a close match with Richmond Park winning 150 points to 146 points.
Richmond Park’s away pairs of Katharina & Kim and Caroline & Uli amassed 73 points to Huntswood’s 81, a deficit of 8 points. However, Richmond Park’s home pairs of Sheena & Peppe and Lia & Richard Hanna amassed 77 points to Huntswood’s 65, a 12 points margin.
Kelso Hamilton Knockout
An RPGC team comprising Uli Katte and Richard Owen won their 2nd round match in this year’s Kelso Hamilton East, Surrey Golf competition against Dulwich and Sydenham Hill golf club. It was a close game, played on the Duke’s course, with never more than 2 holes in it (although RPGC were never behind). The final result, a 2&1 win, was clinched by Richard’s birdie on the 17th hole. The next game is away at Woodcote golf course in Coulsdon.
NAPGC Clapham Common Shield vs High Elms
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.
NAPGC Siemens Bowl, Round 1
The Richmond Park team of Cuneyt, Adrian, Sean, Paul, Gunnar, Julian, Justin and Colm convincing won their first round greensomes stableford match against Wexham Park 162 points to 148 points, principally due to a very strong home team performance on the Duke’s course.
Gordon Forster Bowl Final
Richmond Park’s team (Charlie, Sean, Adrian and Kim) won the NAPGC 2021/22 Gordon Forster Bowl trophy at the National Finals held at the Gaudet Luce golf club in Droitwich Spa. In the final, the team scored a combined 119 stableford points to beat the other 4 finalists from Wimbledon, Tilgate Forest, Huntswood and Wycombe Heights. This is the first time that the club has ever won this NAPGC competition.
Cuneyt and Captain John, who both played in the earlier rounds but were unavailable for the final, celebrated the result with other RPGC members while enjoying the Chinese restaurant on the Belek golf trip in Sirene Hotel- Antalya – Turkey.
Richmond Park team’s journey to Gordon Foster Bowl Finals took over 2 years, as summarised below:
In December 2020 a Richmond Park team comprising Cuneyt Sazer, John Ahad, Charlie Whiteman and James Deissler was prepared to play against East Hampstead. The bookings were made at both venues for Sunday 20th, however Cuneyt had a call from the Hampstead captain on Saturday 19th informing him that the golf course was flooded and would have to be postponed. This was then followed by the introduction of “ Tier 4 “ COVID 19 restrictions. NAPGC cancelled the competition on 27.January 2021 due to COVID 19 and our team had to wait many months for the next competition.
For the 2021/2022 winter competition, Richmond Park “A” team had a bye in the first round. The second round was scheduled for 12th March, 2022. Cuneyt was keen to keep the same players against Stevenage and three players from the 2020 team ( Cuneyt, John and Charlie ) were ready for the match. Charlie ( 25 pts) and Sean O’Sullivan ( 31pts) was four less than Stevenage’s away team who scored 30 points each on the Prince’s. course. However away, Cuneyt ( 38 points) and John ( 34 points) had outstanding games to beat opponents who scored 64 points at home. Richmond Park “ A “ therefore qualified for the next round with a total of 128 to 124 Stableford points.
The next game was scheduled for Sunday 10th of April which coincided with the club’s Ladies’ away weekend in the Essex golf club. Cuneyt had a long journey from Colchester to Hoebridge with strong motivation from Richmond Park golfers. Cuneyt and two opponents each scored 31 points in the long Hoebridge course on a sunny and dry afternoon. John had a bad day and had 25 points. Sean ( 36 points) and Charlie ( 30 points) outscored James & Tom from the Hoebridge team who had total of 57 points. Richmond Park “ A” team beat Hoebridge 132 to 129 which paved the road to the Gordon Forster Final at Gaudet Lace on Sunday 24th April.
Gordon Forster Bowl
The Richmond Park “B” team took on Farnham Park golf club in the first round of the 2021/2022 Gordon Forster Bowl on a cold, windy and latterly rainy December day. The Richmond Park pair playing at Farnham Park won by 6 points but unfortunately the Farnham Park pair playing on the Dukes course beat our home pair by a greater margin (14 points), so the overall result was a win for Farnham Park.
Our ‘away’ team of Richard Owen (35 points) and Uli Katte (31 points), who played a practice round at Farnham Park (FP) with James Deissler on the preceding Wednesday, built up a healthy 6 points lead on the front 9 and maintained it under increasingly wet conditions on the back 9. Our ‘home’ team of Sean Thomas and Robin Thomas were under pressure from a strong FP pairing throughout, losing 76 points to 62 points – one of the FP players having 4 birdies in his individual score of 39 points.