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Golf Champions!
With a band of enthusiastic and excellent players in this year’s Year Eleven, teams for the various competitions were selected from Mark Crooks, Gregory Warner, Johnny Cummings, Adam Christie, Johnny Hunter and Owen Craig; their selection depending on their handicap at the time. The friendly rivalry amongst the boys ensured that they practised and worked hard to reduce those handicaps. With all these boys having attained the maximum age to play in The Ulster Junior Championship, I hoped quietly that was the year that Dunluce might do it!
By the 23 June when The Championships took place at Killymoon Golf Club in Cookstown, Mark Crooks (4), Adam Christie (7) Gregory Warner (11) and Jonathan Cummings (11) were the boys who had made the team. With playing partners Cambridge House, the boys teed off mid morning. Before the Dunluce boys finished their round, I had ascertained that the fancied Campbell College team had scored a total of 72 from their best three cards, an average of just over 27 per card. I was pretty sure that our boys could do better, but having to play off “scratch” and on a course with which they were not familiar, whilst I knew that boys from some of the bigger schools had had practice rounds, nothing was certain.
As I met each of the boys on coming off the eighteenth green, the news was good; Mark had 28 Points, Adam, 25, and Gregory an amazing 28. My initial, quick, excited calculation gave me the total of 71. No! “Boys, Campbell have beaten you by one point.”
“No, Miss,” came a reassuring voice, “we’ve got 81!”
Next came the agonising wait to see if any better scores came in, but no, with all teams back in the clubhouse, Dunluce remained in first place by nine clear points. The boys were delighted to receive the claret jug trophy from Ivor McCandless, Chairman of The Ulster Branch of The G U I and Captain of Killymoon Golf Club, Gerry Breslin and to bring it back home to Dunluce for the first time in the 30-year history of the competition.
