Dave Smith’s Europe claim victory in the Burstwick Cup
A great weekend was had by all last week as we held the 2020 Burstwick Cup in which Dave Smith’s Europe Team took on Steve Alger’s USA!
Due to COVID-19 there were no qualifiers for this year’s Burstwick Cup as they had been cancelled back in June, and the event was only organised with short notice so there was no time to re-arrange. With that being the case the team Captain’s were given the task of picking their teams for this year’s event.
On Saturday the weather wasn’t very kind for the pairs’ fourball matchplay, and Europe took advantage of this by earning themselves a healthy three point lead going into the Sunday singles, the scores at 5.5 to 2.5.
With the American’s backs against the wall it was up to their Captain Steve Alger to rally the troops and try to inspire them to a great comeback with 16 points to play for on Sunday.
Steve lost his match against Dave as the European Captain had a fantastic round, but as the rest of the scores started to come in the margin began to narrow.
With the last few matches to come in USA managed to get within a single point of the Europeans, and it was looking like a tight finish that no one expected! European Captain Dave Smith grabbed a golf buggy and went to give his remaining players encouraging words and this seemed to tip the tide back towards team blue.
As the finished players all gathered around the 18th green to watch the final matches come in and Europe claimed a 12.5 to 11.5 victory, one of the closest matches we have seen at the club!
Congratulations to Dave and his team on this well-fought victory against a steely USA team!
Moving into 2021, we will be looking at increasing the capacity of the Burstwick Cup to include more members as we are now much busier, and may end up tweaking the format slightly too (but keeping the same matchplay tension), so watch this space!
