ENGLAND SEEK ANOTHER SHERRY CUP SUCCESS
The English Golf Union is sending a strong four-man team
to defend the Sherry Cup being played at Royal Sotogrande
Golf Club, Spain, on 6th - 9th April.
The team, all members of the World Class Performance Programme
Elite Squad, will comprise Lee Corfield (Burnham & Berrow),
Gary Lockerbie (Penrith), Matthew Richardson (The Buckinghamshire)
and Gary Wolstenholme (Kilworth Springs).
Corfield was a member of the team that came out on top a
year ago over the same course, a winning tally of 637, 11
under par, left him and team-mates Ross Fisher, Michael Skelton
and Richard Walker two strokes clear of Italy.
Corfield’s role in that victory heralded a successful
2004 in which he won the West of England Strokeplay Championship
then finished runner-up in the Amateur Championship at St
Andrews. The 22 year old from Somerset has been a key member
of the England team since 2002 when he made his debut in the
Home Internationals in Wales, and he is a former winner of
the Lytham Trophy.
Lockerbie, also 22, was English champion in 2003 and earned
his first full cap in that year’s Home Internationals.
He went on to partner Michael Skelton to victory in the Juan
Carlos Tailhade Cup in Argentina, while last year the Cumbrian
finished runner-up to Richardson in the European Amateur in
Sweden. The man from Penrith was England’s top scorer
with four-and-a-half points in the Home Internationals at
Prestwick.
A member of the 2005 Walker Cup squad, Lockerbie was in the
party that visited the Chicago venue in preparation for this
year’s match, and has also been to South Africa with
England for Warm Weather Training.
This will be Richardson‘s first taste of the Sherry
Cup. The 20 year old from Middlesex has starred in recent
years at boys and senior levels, culminating in his victory
in the Brabazon Trophy at West Lancs last May. In August,
he became the first Englishman for 13 years to win the European
Amateur when he triumphed in Sweden and he also represented
GB&I in the St Andrews Trophy and England in the Home
Internationals and the Eisenhower Trophy.
Richardson, who is currently with the Elite squad in Australia,
teamed up with Corfield to finish second in the Juan Carlos
Tailhade Cup in December and has already visited South Africa
and America this year.
Wolstenholme has won the individual title in the Sherry Cup
three times in the past five years, the last in 2003. The
44 year old from Leicestershire has already secured a win
in 2005 with victory in the New South Wales Medal in Australia
last month and recently competed in the Jones Cup.
England’s most capped player has lost none of his appetite
and enthusiasm for competition at the highest level of the
amateur game and has his sight set on a sixth Walker Cup appearance
in Chicago in August.
The Sherry Cup is competed for over 72 holes with the best
three cards each day counting towards the team event. The
individual competition will run simultaneously with the European
Nations Championship, the champion collecting a Gold Sherry
Wine Trophy and the Amateur Masters Jacket. If the Championship
ends in a tie, the teams involved will nominate one player
to compete in a sudden death play-off.
Previous winners of this prestigious event include Padraig
Harrington (1991), and Sergio Garcia (1997 and 1998).
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