Farleigh take 2021 League title on Final’s Day at Surrey Downs

Friday saw the long awaited return of the Surrey Hills Finals day after a year off thanks to Covid.

Farleigh Team Captain Craig

Team Captain Craig, collected the title on behalf of his Farleigh team after a very impressive season of 7 and 1 after all eight matches. Congratulations to the whole team, a great year of great golf.

Special mention to Reigate running them a close second with the title only being decided on the 2nd to last game of the season. I hope all players across all teams enjoyed the golf and the social (if not always the results of their matches!).

Surrey Downs was looking good – greenkeepers had clearly put the hardwork in. Well done to them. First up a big thanks to Pete Crowe and all who supported him in arranging the day. It takes a lot of planning and no small amount of negotiation to organise the day with the club with a shotgun start, dinner and prizes. Let alone 75 odd golfers walking around before the start not knowing what tee they are on and who they are playing with.

All went very smoothly from what I could see, and that’s down to a lot of hard work behind the scenes mostly from Pete supported by Steve B and each of the team captains. Unfortunately Woldingham couldn’t field a side but we still had a full field of 4ball scramblers out there with a few extra pulled in from different clubs. It all comes together in the end, and I hope all had a great day.

Course was in good nick after a long summer of play, and the weather did us well. October for Finals Day usually means a shower, or for the last visit to Surrey Downs, a full on thunderstorm. Fortunately none of that on Friday and the challenge our fourball had was to enjoy 18holes with a certain J Harris offering an opinion on… well everything really, and espeically my golf. Alongside league founder Phil Churchill and Lewis from Reigate we had a great round. Certainly not scoring wise but we all enjoyed it and proudly secured 13th or 14th out of 16 teams.

Well done the Captains who I believe came first after a wee hoo-har over the scoring from the winning team? A missing hole score I think. Pete skilfully negotiated the outcome, and of course no-one lost sight of the fact that its a fun day for good banter and occasionally some half decent golf if we’re lucky.

After a nice roast dinner and a few words from Pete and Steve, Phil stood up and rather than espouse the league values at length for 15mins, chose to lament and then bolster the hopes of the Surrey Downs team to perhaps take their first title win soon. Great to see Phil around, I hope each year’s host will extend an open invitation to Phil who now plays at Cuddington to come along and enjoy the day.

Finally, congratulations once again to Craig and Farleigh. Importantly, it is great to have the league back underway from last year and hope we have an equally competitive and enjoyable season in 2022.