Gorleston seniors played in the first leg of this annual match against the seniors of Great Yarmouth & Caister on Friday 17th May.

Weather conditions were superb.

This is a long running “grudge” match between to the two rival local clubs and whilst played on friendly terms has an “edge” to it, with “Hambro” (“Myhill”) style scoring.

Last year the GGC team suffered an 11 hole defeat at Caister in the 1st leg, but miraculously turned it around on the return leg and retain the trophy.

Clearly this wasn’t something we wanted to have to repeat this year.

The 1st game started very tight, with Caister fielding a 0.8 WHS index senior player!

However, it meant the GGC pairing were in receipt of lots of shots! Match was level after 6 holes, but GGC then nudging ahead by 3 at the turn & then Tony Jackson “caught fire” on the back nine with the pairing ending 7 holes up!

Next pairing lost by 3, but the next won by 9, so with half the matches completed we were 13 holes up.

The next two results went in Caister’s favour, but at a modest margins of 3 holes & 1 hole, taking our lead down to “just” 9.

We nervously awaited the final pairing of Martin Pestle & IPSC, Martin Bullen playing the “anchor leg”. They delivered with an 8 hole victory, so GGC have a very creditable 17 hole advantage to take forward to the 2nd leg at GGC on Tuesday 13th August and hopefully retain the Petheridge for another year.

Colin Denny
Seniors Captain

PS – I was delighted to win the nearest the pin prize on the 14th ?

(Apologies for not naming the whole team for the sake of brevity of this report, but photo refers