Sparta teams miss out in the Lloyd George
Both Sparta teams in the CSSC Lloyd George Trophy competition missed out in their recent matches - the A Team going down 2-1 to FCO and the B Team by the same score to the Home Office.
'A' Team match report:
The A team were matched against the FCO at Farnham GC and after some searching, a team of Vince Rossiter (a bit of moonlighting here as he also played for the B Team!), Mike Arney and Martin Woodbridge was put together.
There was some reminiscing before the game for both Mike and Vince who met up with an old BT work colleague who was playing for FCO. However, the niceties ended there as he ended any hopes of glory for Martin on the course with a comfortable 3&2 win. Indeed, Martin did well to hang on for as long as possible and even extended the game after going four down to win a couple of holes back. But in the end his opponent sealed the win with holes to spare.
The other two matches however were closer affairs with both ending all square at the 18th. Mike perhaps should have won his match during which he had a run of four straight pars and was 3up at one point. But local knowledge won the day for his opponent as Mike found trees and bunkers not to his liking. Nonetheless he did go down the last one up but the final greenside bunker put paid to any win for him.
It was the reverse for Vince who, although he started well with good putts on the first two greens for halves, found himself 3 down at the turn. His opponent had already played 18 holes in the morning and during the back nine his game wilted allowing Vince to bring the match back to all square.
So extra holes were required to sort out the match and with the first halved, Vince was left with four footer on the second to keep the game alive. But this time his putter let him down, so the match went to FCO.
With 2 matches won by FCO and the other halved, they gave Sparta that match for a 2 - 1 win.