Seniors Channel League vs Devon. Exeter GC 15th July 2011

The fourth match in this year’s Seniors Channel League was played at the inner city parkland Exeter G &CC. The weather for the day was promised to be sunny but deteriorating into persistent showers as the afternoon progressed. Having managed a reasonable result against Gwent the previous time out the captain, Jerry Gegg (Chippenham) was hopeful that we might build on that. With Paul Bloomfield (Chippenham) and Richard Jeffrey (Salisbury) unavailable and Roger Searle (High Post) still out injured the team was not as strong as it might have been. Nevertheless, the captain was satisfied that those selected would manage to give a good account of themselves. However, in the morning foursomes it soon become clear that all was not well and at lunch we were 0-5 down and staring down the barrel of a bit of a hiding.

The plan for the afternoon singles was to win the first 8 and all would be well! And despite the gloomy weather forecast it remained dry for the singles. However, the Devon team contained a lot of very good golfers and they largely played very well and began to give the Wiltshire boys a lesson in match play golf. The Captain played, new to senior golf, Peter Middleton  who was 2 under par when dispatching him on the 12^th. In the top match, current Wiltshire senior champion, David Lewis (Marlborough) had an up and down game against Devon Senior Champion Jim Pettigrew, mixing the sublime with the ridiculous only just going down on the last. Some small bright spots on the otherwise bleak horizon were provided by wins for Bill Cardno (Chippenham) and Michael Saunders (Tidworth) and a good half from new boy Steve Kelley (Kingsdown).

Overall this was a very disappointing result, despite the fact that the Devon team played very well, and we will need to get a firm grip before meeting the might of Glamorgan at Bowood on 19 July.