WOODCOTE PARK SEEK A CHAMPION CLUB DOUBLE
Woodcote Park will seek to become only the third club to
successfully defend the title when the English Champion Club
tournament is held at King's Lynn Golf Club on 12th-13th September.
Ealing from Middlesex and Yorkshire's Sand Moor are the only
clubs to have won the competition twice in a row but Woodcote
Park will join this group if they can come out on top in the
two-day event over the Norfolk course.
The Surrey champions collected the title at Northamptonshire
County a year ago by the narrowest of margins, edging past
Southern Valley from Kent on countback after the teams had
finished tied on 285.
Two of their winning team, Danny Lomas and Steve Russell,
will be in action again, but Kieran Staunton is now a professional.
His place is taken by Russell Jones.
Southern Valley is also competing again with the same three-man
line-up in Ed Richardson, Will Richardson and Ricky Neil-Jones.
Several other clubs are also making a repeat visit including
Coxmoor from Nottinghamshire, the winners in 2000 and competing
in their fourth successive Champion Club, Stoneham from Hampshire,
Isle of Wight and Channel Islands, and Northumberland champions
Morpeth.
The Stoneham team will miss former boy international David
Porter who has now decided to turn professional, while Morpeth
can call on the services of ex-Scottish international Sandy
Twynholm, who finished third in the recent Logan Trophy at
Royal Birkdale.
John Kemp, recently crowned British Mid-Amateur champion
and runner-up in the English Mid-Amateur at Royal Birkdale,
competes for John O'Gaunt, the Bedfordshire champions, while
Mark Pilling, last year's British Boys champion, is in the
Astbury team from Cheshire.
Cosby, the Leicestershire and Rutland champions, are fielding
a strong line-up including David Gibson, the county champion
and a former county captain, Gilbert Scoular, also a former
captain, and Liam Plant, like Gibson, a regular member of
the county first team.
Cumbria, whose players have won the English Amateur and Mid-Amateur
titles in recent weeks, are pinning their hopes on the Eden
trio that includes Peter Richardson, a former boy international
who reached the semi-finals of the English Amateur at Alwoodley.
Several other teams are fielding their county champions including
Royal Norwich, who have Austin Brydon, the Norfolk title-holder,
who enjoyed a successful run in the Logan Trophy at Royal
Birkdale.
The Champion Club event is contested by the champions of
all 34 English counties and is decided on aggregate over 36
holes of stroke play, the best two scores from the three team
members in each round to count.
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