Hello and welcome to this weeks' newsletter.

As you would have seen from last weeks' newsletter, Aaron and I were in St.Mellion last week in the national final of the 4BBB PGA championships. We had a great week, St.Mellion is one of the tightest, toughest and best courses I've played in the British Isles and was presented in fantastic condition. Unfortunately we came 25th with the top 24 making the cut for the final round. However this only tells half the story!

After a -3 first round we were lying 15th out of the 60 pairs that had qualified. We had an afternoon tee off in round two which initially meant teeing off in bad conditions, though it did brighten up throughout the round. We played the course back to front and shot +2 for the first 9 to take us back to -1 overall.

As we walked past the leaderboard with 7 to play we saw the projected cut at -3. To make it more challenging, we decided to drop another shot two holes later so with 5 holes to play we needed three birdies.

We went birdie birdie to get to -2 and on walking past the final live leaderboard, the cut had gone back to -2. Aaron birdied our 16th and after a chip in par on the next from myself we decided to play conservatively down the 9th, our 18th to ensure we made the cut on -3. We walked past the final leaderboard on 18 with the cut still saying -2 and were quite happy with our two days' work only to find the PGA "live scoring" leaderboard was actually incorrect and the cut had gone to -4!

Trying to explain to PGA officials what I thought of the live scoring and how it had affected our decision making was like banging your head against a brick wall and no one seemed to want to take responsibility for it.

We realise that we may not have made up the shot in the final two holes but it would have been nice to know what our target was. It did leave a bad taste after such a good tournament prior to this, however it did spur us on to want to go back next year and give it another go. So instead of enjoying another evening in the Brasserie with the Linay's we embarked on a 6 hour journey home. After 4 days in the shop on his own Cam did seem unusually unsympathetic towards the events in Cornwall!

Scratch team ready for Goddard Cup Semi final

SWGC scratch team play Bourn in the semi final of Cambridgeshire's premier cup team trophy for the Goddard cup this coming Sunday .As holders of the cup they have recently won the CAGU Division 1 this year and are going for a final spot in September.

Last Sunday the County Open was played at Saffron Walden Golf Club. Callum Brookes, 16,won the County Handicap cup with gross scores of 76 and 77. Mark Reeve, who has again been in blistering form this year, was the top Cambridgeshire amateur with scores of 73 and 71 and Tom Duggan was 6th 75 and 71. The overall winner of the County Open was Stuart Brown with scores of 72 and 67.

Graham Goodman scratch captain said

"We won the Div 1 with a great team effort and now we all have to deliver for the difficult visit to Bourn this coming Sunday in order to reach the final for the second year in a row."

Callum Brookes completing a brilliant week after collecting best nett in the junior open on Friday he won best overall nett in the county open on Sunday. Along the way having his handicap severely cut.

As many of you who have played with Callum will know, he has a fantastic natural golf swing and is starting to fulfil his potential as a golfer. I'm sure these performances are just the start of a bright future in the game for him.

For Mark it caps off a good season in which he looks to take the order of merit at the club for his consistent play throughout the year and his performances have not gone unnoticed by CAGU.

Ladies Scratch Team

Justine Voss, Linda Kelsey and Jackie Smith played the last but one match in the Scratch league on Sunday and came home with a 2 1/2 to 1/2 win. Royston away is always hard because the terrain is tricky and on Sunday the greens were too.

Justine was first out and came in with a 4-2 win playing her usual very steady golf.

Linda was all square on the 15th, chipped in on the 16th, lost the 17th then had a 6' putt to halve her match. Jackie had a great round winning 5-3 so all in all a tremendous win.

They have the last game to play on Thursday 4th, September starting at 4.50pm. That's Royston at home!

To go up to the next division, they need to win one game, so our fingers are crossed for them.