SOUTH AFRICA NEXT FOR ENGLAND ELITE SQUAD
Four members of England’s Elite Squad will be flying
to South Africa to compete in the South African Amateur Championship
early next month.
Matthew Baldwin, Adam Gee, Gary Lockerbie and Paul Waring
have been selected to carry the flag when the Championship
gets underway at the Wingate Park Country Club in Pretoria
on 6th - 11th March.
This will be a second visit to South Africa this year for
all four players. In January they spent time at Fancourt for
Warm Weather Training and in addition they have also seen
action on various continents in 2005 prior to the start of
the domestic season.
Baldwin’s busy start to the year, following his week
of Warm Weather Training, began with a victorious three days
in Spain as part of the young England team that won the Costa
Ballena Quadrangular Tournament against opposition from Finland,
Germany and Spain. He will be heading back to the Iberian
Peninsula for next week’s Portuguese Amateur Championship
at Estela before joining up with his team-mates and heading
for Pretoria.
Baldwin, the youngest member of the squad at 18, is a former
winner of the McGregor Trophy, the current Lancashire champion,
last year’s England boy captain, and a member of the
2005 Walker Cup squad.
After completing his Warm Weather Training, Gee, 24, from
Surrey, flew to the United States as part of the England squad
that played in the Jones Cup at Ocean Forest, Georgia. The
Leatherhead golfer was added to the Elite Squad for 2005 after
a year in the England A Squad, during which he gained his
first full cap against France at Royal St George’s last
May.
He also reached the semi-finals of the Portuguese Amateur
and was a member of the Surrey side that won the County Championship
last September.
Lockerbie, 22, the former English champion from Cumbria is
an experienced campaigner having made his full England debut
in the 2003 Home Internationals in Ireland and has been a
regular cap since. Like Baldwin and Waring, he is a member
of the 2005 Walker Cup squad.
Waring, from Cheshire, has been to South Africa and Australia
already this year although the latter wasn’t a happy
time as the 20 year old had to pull out of the Lake Macquarie
Tournament with a recurrence of the shoulder injury that forced
him out of last September‘s Home Internationals. That
would have seen the former England boy captain make his full
England debut, having been a boy international since 2001.
Commenting on the event, EGU Performance Director Nigel Furniss
explained “This is yet another great opportunity for
members of the Elite Squad to compete in an international
field at a time of year when high quality, competitive events
are not being played on home soil. We will be looking for
strong performances from Matt, Adam, Gary and Paul and expect
them to be contending for the titles on offer.”
The week in South Africa begins with the 72-hole South African
stroke play Championship after which the leading 32 progress
to the South African Amateur Championship.
The last Englishman to win the South African title was David
Dixon, now a professional, at Welcom in Johannesburg in 2001.
Elite Squad member Gary Wolstenholme won the South African
stroke play title in 2002 at George Golf Club.
The England squad:
Matthew Baldwin (Royal Birkdale)
Adam Gee (Leatherhead)
Gary Lockerbie (Penrith)
Paul Waring (Bromborough)
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