On Sunday 20th April the People Carrier set off from Eltham College at 9.30am with Max, Jonathan and Ollie on board (ably assisted by Mr and Mrs Angel) destined for the Players Club just outside of Bristol. The boys were competing in the National Golf Finals having successfully qualified by winning the regional qualifying group. This involved a series of match play games which saw impressive victories away against Westminster School (3-0) and a tense affair against Whitgift (2-1) to name but two. The Sunday practice round on the Codrington Course (Par 72) brought into focus the magnitude of the task. Long par 4s and thought provoking par 5s, both with elements of large aqua based hazards revealed the exam paper was not going to be easy.
Indeed, on Day 1 of the competition the heavens opened and rain fell for most the day making good scoring difficult, especially on greens which were still suffering a little from previous months of wet weather. Jonathan finished 4 over and Max 10 over and Ollie 16 over reflected a tough day at the office. Day 2 brought better weather and the opportunities to improve on our position of 13th out of the 18 schools from all over the United Kingdom. Jonathan started off very well. He stood on the 5th tee at 2 under par but sadly got derailed in the back nine and came back with an 8 over par, Max and Ollie performed better with a 6 and 9 over par respectively.
It meant that Eltham College finished 12th overall (the highest position in a National Golf Finals we have ever achieved) with very little separating us from a good top 10 finish. What a great experience for the boys however. Playing against the best golfers in the country is never an easy task and yet the boys performed well and demonstrated why they deserved to be there.
Eltham College is now ranked 13th in the country out of 200+ independent schools for golf and this is in no small measure due to the efforts of the three boys that went to Bristol and the efforts of recent OEs such as Charlie Reynolds and Avi Sharma.
