With Dom out on tour this week, I was lucky to be asked to join Chris Hart, GP and Mr Loveless on Monday at the Prostate Cancer UK Charity Day event held at Sandy Lodge Golf Club near Northwood in Herts.
Hosted by Jack from the charity and former European Tour pro Andrew Murray, the day is a ‘thank you’ held by Prostate Cancer UK for all those golfers who had raised money for them during the year. This year they held 5 events across the country, and Sandy Lodge was again the venue for the South East event.
Cheque of the monies raised by Dom’s charity year 2018/2019, together with charity ambassador Andrew Murray. The new short game area recently opened at Sandy Lodge
Designed by Harry Vardon, Sandy Lodge its a nice track and although we didn’t see it at its best with drizzle and showers for most of the day before the rain really came in as we walked in. It has some great holes, especially the par3’s and some decent greens which during the summer which would clearly be up there 10plus on the stim.
Over 100 golfers from across the south east were out for the day, the club closing the course for our shotgun start. Day started with a welcome talk after a buffet cooked breakfast, before Andrew Murray gave a putting and bunker masterclass, making it all look easy and passing over tips Seve gave him when he was on tour. Seemed a very nice guy.
We had our picture taken with Andrew together with the cheque from the money raised in Dom’s captains’ year… helped by the successful charity day held at Surrey National in March.
We then headed out to our 11th starting hole. Our golf was steady across the day. Some very good, some quite ropey but seemed we always had 2 of us in the hole and after the first nine holes we were on for our target for 90points. Can’t have too may hopes up on a charity day with a wide mix of handicaps out playing.
They had a charity hole on the long par3 which we found out after I snagged a sleeve of balls for hitting the green Turns out Andrew Murray was walking around filming players on the green and the next tee shots. Slightly embarrassing but I sunk a 30foot downhill sweeping birdie putt on the hole and he captured me pretending to shoot it in the hole on camera oh dear. Not my best moment but didn’t care. Mr Loveless followed it up with an awful grin straight into the camera after holing his 15footer in front of the tour pro.
Graham slotted several decent putts in for bonus points, Chris was grinding away, GP putting some long drives in amongst a few right ones and I was around for some pars and the odd birdie. The first hole was a par5 which was about our 11th. Graham Loveless played a blinder, duffing and fatting his way up the 480yard hole only to thin his 4th shot to just a few feet and hole it. Typical “CC” but all good when he does that on your team!
We forgot we had each bought two mulligans and around halfway realised we could’ve used them to add a few early points on. I then burnt two of mine on a stroke index5 par4 which fortunately returned 4pts. GP pulled his last mulligan out on our 2nd to last hole for again more points… we finished well and hoped to be up the leaderboard. We even had a chance to poke Chris for missing the final 4 foot putt of the day for a final extra point.
Surrey National takes the win
We finished on a decent 88pts.
Turns out that after a nice dinner, 3rd was announced at 87 and we thought oh well, we’ve one some tees or some balls. Second was then also announced as 87 and turns out Surrey National had won the day and scooped up some golf shirt and some nice golf bags.
A proper team effort and despite some dodgy weather we all had a cracking day. Big thanks to Dom who sorted the day out on our behalf, and Andrew Murray & Prostate Cancer UK for making it a memorable (and successful) day for the Surrey National lot.
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