"On a bright and sunny Wednesday morning, some of the senior golf team travelled across the old Severn bridge intent on doing battle with the seniors of Gwent on the world famous golf course at St Pierre, near Chepstow. A course famous for hosting the Solheim Cup and Dunlop Masters amongst others and at over 7000 yards in length it promised to give the team a stern test of their golfing skills and fitness. The morning foursomes saw wins for Paul Bloomfield and Jerry Gegg (Chippenham GC), Michael Saunders and Jim Mar-Gerrison (Tidworth GC) and Henry Burt (Salisbury & SW GC) and David Lewis (Marlborough GC) which when added to a half from Bill Cardno and Jim Stent (Chippenham GC) gave the team a healthy 2 point lead going into the 10 singles matches.

The weather continued to be fairly benign with the forecast showers not appearing but, the wind was beginning to increase as Paul Bloomfield led the team off against old friend and also possible 2011 senior Welsh international, Nigel Evans. The singles were played in pairs to cut down on time however, the length of the course meant that the rounds still took over 4 and a half hours to complete. In the early phases it looked quite likely that Wiltshire might well prevail and achieve the 4.5 points needed for victory but, sadly, that was not to be the case and as the matches progressed it became obvious that we were losing our way. Paul Bloomfield gained our first point when Nigel Evans was forced to retire after 9 holes with a bad hand injury but our next points didn’t come until Michael Saunders gained his  second win of the day and Jim Stent also closed out his game on the 17^th. Three more losses on the 17^th saw the game slip away and with a couple of surprising heavy defeats in the last few games we eventually went down 7-3 and 8.5-6.5 overall.

Overall some aspects of the match were encouraging inasmuch that the foursomes result was excellent however, that must be balanced against another poor showing in the singles. One can only hope for an improvement in our next match, against the might of Devon, at Exeter G & CC on Jul 15". Jerry Gegg, Captain