Cranleigh away match

So on Saturday we played Cranleigh away. As always this is a great fixture with some fun banter as this our sister course and we now also have the same the head greenkeeper too. The banter began at breakfast when Kelvin, the Cranleigh captain, reminded us in his opening welcome that we play for the border cup although it only seems to have Cranleigh on it as the winners. He did also note that we had arrived with a team of lower handicapers and maybe this was the year we wanted to win in back.
So I was playing with Richard Clegg and we had to give the shots, 8 to Kelvin, 3 to his partner Derek and Richard got 1 shot. we started well with 4 pars but because of the shots found ourselves 2 down after 4. The good news is by now I have played enough match play to know we should just be patient and this was rewarded as we continued to play well and with 2 pars and 2 birdies from Richard in the next four holes we bought it back to 1 up after 8. The ninth was a very interesting hole for me, as after a good tee shot I went on to loose 3 balls on my second shot and still ended up with a par. This was because three times in a row I hit the electricity wires or posts and had to free drop everytime. On the back 9 the game did not get any easier, they won the 10th and 12th to go back to 1 up but we knew we had a good chance as for the next 5 holes there are no shots. This worked to our advantage as I birdied 13 and then Richard hit a great drive on 15 (295 yards to the edge of the green) and made a 2 putt birdie to get us back to 1 up. We held on with 3 pars to finish and ended up winning 2up. when we counted up our scores we had shot a gross 2 under par 66 and still only just won, but it was good to know it was Kelvin's first loss of the year.
As the rest of the groups came in it was not such good news. All of the next four groups had lost some close battles but we did manage a half from the last group. This was of course not good enough for us and the Border Cup remains in the possession of Cranleigh. we need to try harder next year and get a good win at home to take a lead to Cranleigh.