The 2018 Torbay Cup has been won by Torquay

The 2018 Torbay Cup has been won by Torquay after a very close contest with Dainton Park over a weekend of Ryder Cup style scratch medal play at Churston GC.

6 South Devon Clubs compete in series of foursomes, fourballs and, on the Sunday, singles. Every club has a representative pair/player in the 4 groups in each of the Saturday sessions and the 8 on Sunday. Best return scores 6 points, down to 1 for the poorest, with tied scores sharing points.

The event began in pretty dismal weather on Saturday morning with the foursomes. Torquay and Churston emerged as the early leaders taking 17 points each from the 4 groups, with the Warren tucked in behind with 16. Best of the scoring was a superb 1-over par 71 from Teignmouth’s Dave Best and Dave Henson.

In the afternoon attention turned to fourball play. Dainton came through very strongly with 21 points from a possible 24 to move into a challenging 2nd place behind Torquay. Churston lay 3rd on 30, with Warren just half a point behind in 4th. A superb 65 from the host club’s Rick Osbourne and Simon Knapman was the stand-out score.

Saturday’s results still left everything to play for in the 8 singles series on Sunday. It is a tribute to Churston that despite the awful weather on Saturday and overnight into Sunday the singles still started on time.

Torquay made the best of all starts, winning the first group through Scott Pym’s excellent 72 as their nearest challengers struggled, and then taking 4 points in the next. Honours remained even through the next 2 groups between the two leaders, although Warren came into the picture with a group win for Chris Hayter and a 2nd for Ben Sclater, but despite good efforts from Tim Aggett (group 5 tied 2nd) and Chris McGill with a tied for the best score in group 7 (73) Warren couldn’t maintain the challenge and settled for 3rd place overall.

Lester Barnes produced an excellent 71 to take group 4 and give Torquay the advantage but Richard Ward’s 73 in group 5 followed up by Haydn Priscott with 72 to take group 6 put Dainton into a strong position as Torquay struggled. With the last 2 groups to come there were just 2½ points in it.

The 7th group saw no change to the overall position as Matt Millar and Nathan Gilpin tied on 74. In the 8th group the top points score was out of reach for the two leading clubs as Stover’s Sam Dunn produced a best of the day 69 to win the group comfortably. Pete Bicknell made certain of the win for Torquay with a solid round of 72, 1 better than Nathan Brown’s 73.

Torquay Captain Mark Passmore paid tribute to the efforts of his team in his presentation speech, also praising the Churston’s efforts in staging a superb weekend of golf despite all the problems the weather threw at them.

Result

Torquay 69 points

Dainton Park 66

Warren 57.5

Churston 52

Teignmouth 47.5

Stover 44

The 2019 event will be held at the Warren

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