Western GC beaten by Andover

Western GC beaten by Andover

The Western lost their semi-final match to tournament favourites Andover GC and the subsequent third and fourth places play-off to Stoneham GC.

Cowes GC eventually took the title with a narrow victory over Andover in the final.Confidence was high among the Western players despite discovering the condition of the course which featured bone-hard greens and many blind shots.Unfortunately for the Jersey team one of their top players pulled out on the morning of the tournament suffering from a bad headache.

Chris Davey was drafted in at the last minute.Geoff Laffoley started proceedings and played well to hold his opponent to all square playing the 16th, a par three of 235 yards with thick rough on the left and and gorse on the right with no room for error.Unfortunately the Westerner pulled his tee shot that had a wicked bounce to the left, resulting in a lost ball.

He played three off the tee but couldn’t manage to retrieve the situation and lost 2 and 1.The rest of the matches went a similar way with none of the Western boys able to close out their matches despite being in good positions to do so.Simon Moloney suffered the biggest defeat of his life when he lost 6 and 5 to a 14-year-old category one player who canned every putt he looked at – something Moloney did himself not so many years ago, when he beat Justin Rose in the Hampshire Greenjackets.The third and fourth place play-off against Stoneham GC – a club which boasts more than 60 category one players – again started well for the Jersey side but they failed to kill off the opposition in the closing holes.Finishing fourth was a huge disappointment but all vowed to learn from the experience and do their utmost to reach the finals again and do themselves justice.Cowes beat Andover in a very tight final, four matches to three, in what was their fifth final appearance in ten years but their first ever win.Their captain had a hole-in- one on the 16th to win his match, with the winning points from the last match where the Cowes player chipped in from a bunker on the 18th to take the match to the 19th where he holed a six-footer to win.Although very disappointed, Western captain Roger Laffoley said that the standard of play their opposition produced around the greens was exemplary, in both imagination and execution of shots.He added that in hindsight one practice round was not enough and that the opposition were able to get in a lot more practice which proved to be, in his opinion, the deciding factor.Jersey Western: Dave Carey, Paul Camara, Dom Cullinane, Chris Davey, Geoff Laffoley, Simon Mills, Simon Moloney, Steve Monins, Pat Patterson.

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