The morning started on the slightly-more-rural setting of the Forest Course at Bramshaw. The matches were watched with some curiosity by the local equine and bovine natives. The off-the-tee distance advantage that the Hampshire boys had was not fully taken advantage of, and some good play by the Dorset team gave us a surprising 3-2 advantage going into the afternoon singles.

The afternoon was played on a classy looking Manor Course, and due to Tee-time constraints, the Singles matches had to be played in 4 balls. It became quickly apparent that the Hampshire team were much more comfortable on this type of course, and some loose play by some of the Dorset team saw Hampshire establish early healthy leads. Dorset battled across the board, but some of the matches unfortunately came to early conclusions.

The afternoon closed out without a single win for Dorset in the Singles, but the disappointing result does hide some excellent battles in several matches.

Dominic Dunstan worked hard in his match to unfortunately be finally pipped, despite some excellent short-game play. Ben Small and George Carroll were successful in holding their matches steady, but could not make up the deficit to re-gain control. Ever-steady Steffen Foley methodically kept going as the last match out in the approaching rain and thunder, but again could not claw back the earlier lost holes.

Closest singles match of the day was between George Davis and Hampshire’s Arrun Singh-Brar. This was a game of par golf, with the occasional birdy or rare dropped shot from one of the boys to swap leadership, which happened several times. The match was all-square standing on the 18th Tee. Arrun, on his home course at Bramshaw, clearly knew the line off the 18th tee for the left-hand dog-leg, while George’s tee shot went left, giving Arrun the advantage and the match, 1 up.

Young Sam Brooke was proud to wear his county kit in his first county representation. He put in a valiant effort while playing Hampshire’s longest hitter. Sam has another 2 years of U14’s golf ahead of him to win some scalps for his County, which I’m sure he will.

The Hampshire match was never going to be easy, but there was some disappointment in not winning any of the singles matches. However, with our two pre-season friendlies over, we go into the league match season with some good experience behind us; some bitter and some sweet.

Our first league match for the 2012 Jack Roberts League Trophy is against Cornwall at Bridport & West Dorset Golf Club on Saturday 19th May.

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