9 - 1

The victorious RoW team

In the words of the greatest sports commentary ever:

We are the best in the world! We are the best in the world! We have beaten England 5½ -1½  in Golf!! It is completely unbelievable! (Ed – it is completely believable!) We have beaten England! England, birthplace of giants. Lord Nelson, Lord Beaverbrook, Sir Winston Churchill, Sir Anthony Eden, Clement Attlee, Frank Walters, Henry Cooper, Lady Diana, Lady Susan Byfield, --- we have beaten them all. We have beaten them all.

Theresa May can you hear me? Theresa May, I have a message for you: We have knocked England out of the Golf history books. Theresa May, as they say in your language in the boxing bars around Madison Square Garden in New York: Your boys took a hell of a beating! Your boys took a hell of a beating!

These were the emotional works of the Rest of the World Captain Will Smith as he gave his post match address to the assembled crowds at Hoebridge Golf Club. Shouts of “Plagiarist” arose from the back rows but he silenced the hecklers by retorting:

Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few. All hearts go out to the rest of the world fighters, whose brilliant actions we see with our own eyes Sunday after Sunday, but we must never forget that all the time, night after night, month after month, our brave R0W golfers  travel far into driving ranges throughout London, find their targets with the highest navigational skill, aim their attacks, often under the heaviest fire, often with serious loss, and inflict shattering blows upon the whole of the English golfing fraternity. Never forget that the match score over the last 10 years is now RoW 9 – England .1

Stirring stuff from Braveheart himself and he showed his RoW comrades the way to win the day by taking down the cream of the English team, 2016 Titans champion Tod Lockard.  Tod wore the white shirt (Ed - the white shirt of surrender?)  with pride and fought a tough duel with the Scottish dervish who on the 18th tee invoked the spirit of Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn to rally the RoW team and secure a narrow win on the 18th (1/0).

Pride of England!

This was followed up by another tough fought match with Chris Kershaw securing a draw against another of the proud Englishmen David Keane (Ed – Am I missing something here?). At this point the English team must have thought that they were in with a chance but the next matches resulted in a crushing 5/4 defeat of Keith Leung by another Braveheart – James McIntyre. With some lesser known Scot also winning at the Olympics it was a great day for Scotland.

Next matchup saw English aristocrat Charles Lutyens take on the pride of Wales Max Boyce (Ed – do you mean Phil Schick?). Charles was using any attempt to get the advantage. He invoked the spirit of Wembley 66 (Ed – lots of spirit invocation going on here?) by wearing the threadbare shirt that his father wore to that famous match in 66. This was a brilliant match which had moments of controversy. Phil kindly reminded Charles not to hit a putt he was about to take on the 5th green. Charles had neglected to replace the ball in the correct position. Then on the 14th green after Charles had blasted out of the greenside bunker to land in the rough just OOB, Phil magnanimously allowed Charles to proceed without penalty. Sportsman of the year award goes to Max / Phil. And his reward was a 1/0 defeat as Charles (shaking like a leaf) Lutyens sunk the winning putt on the 18th to salvage a valuable point and rally the flagging English team.

Have I hit it hard enough? Lutyens sneaks win on 18

But it was a brief respite as the RoW juggernaut then got into full meat-grinding mode:

• Northern Ireland's Greg McErlean dominated his match with Andrew Cooke from the 8th hole onwards to win 5/4. Andrew did secure a magnificent birdie on the 18th with a flop shot from 30 yards into the hole.

• fellow Norn Iron hot shot Alan Lee took the key scalp of Kam Chaturachinda with another crushing 5/4 win

• And finally newbie Alex Pointon beat Mannie Rayment 3/2 to pick up the final RoW points.

In the bonus prize competitions Phil “Max” Schick won NP, Alan and Alex won the LD prizes, Chris won NP2 and Kam won the money.  It was a fun day out (well not for the English).

Hoebridge was in very good condition, with fast running fairways (check out the 300+ yard drives at the LD hole from Keith and Alan), good greens and very tough rough.  The bacon butty was also well received with the majority scoring it 6 but many others saying 7 or even 8.  Official award is 7.