The match took place on a bitterly cold, windy day on a course located high up on the Wilts downs above Warminster. West Wilts GC is a challenging layout. It showed all the problems of uneven early season growth – particularly on and around the greens. Such conditions provided a severe physical and mental test for all players.
 
In the morning (9 hole) foursomes, Wilts assumed early command of proceedings and only a very “stuffy” halved match by Alistair Johnston & Danny Dowell in game No 3 prevented a whitewash across the first three matches. However, Somerset’s tail well and truly wagged with fine wins for debutants, Simon Harris & Steve Palmer followed by Steve Francis & Steve Thomas. Although both the latter are experienced players, they were partnering each other for the first time
 
So, at lunch, the scores were tied at 2.5 apiece
 
In the top 5 singles matches, Wilts edged ahead by one point. A feat they repeated in the bottom 5 matches thus giving them an overall winning margin of two points. The fact that two singles matches were halved and a further two were settled on the 18th demonstrates just what a closely fought affair this match proved to be
 
Somerset heads never dropped and everyone gave their all. We were edged out by a fine Wilts team who deservedly are the reigning champions of the Senior Channel League
 
The support, throughout the day, of our SGU President and Vice President was much appreciated by our team
 
This Somerset Senior Squad has no “stars” because we don’t really believe in them. Rather, we are focussed on producing teams of “fighters” who will support each other totally in the morning foursomes and fight to the finish in the afternoon singles. That said, it should be noted that Steve Palmer, making his debut, scored maximum points
 
All members of our newly enlarged Squad are fully aware of the crucial role of our pool of reserves. For this match, we suffered two withdrawals. One of our reserves who was called up, Steve Thomas, secured maximum points and we had two further reserves, Tim Harris (Wells) and Matt Lazenby (Enmore Park) nominated to step in at short notice. Note: There are further reserves aplenty who are both able and committed to contributing to our endeavours throughout the season ahead. We’ll need them
 
In pursuit of CI, we will now evaluate all aspects of our preparation & performance and incorporate any identified areas of improvement into our preparations for future matches
 
Next up, we have our County Seniors’ Championship on 12/05/17 at Taunton & Pickeridge followed by a home SCL match against Devon on 31/05/17 at Burnham & Berrow
 
Alex Kidd SGU Seniors’ Captain

Back Row (LtoR) Steve Thomas, Pete Davies, Paddy Maclennan,Steve Francis, Simon Harris, Alistair Johnston. Geoff Ogden (SGU Vice President), James Ward

Front Row (LtoR) Barry Simpson, Danny Dowell, Paul Middleton (SGU President) Alex Kidd (Captain)
 

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