Simon Royal won the Chesham & Ley Hill G.C.’s ‘2021 Champion of Champions Open’ on Saturday, with a superb net score of 68, just narrowly edging Ian King by one shot! Due to the cancellation of many competitions in 2020 it was decided to run this years Champion of Champions event as an ‘open’ competition rather than having the usual qualification process.
Course conditions were not ideal, with the course having to be closed in the morning due to heavy overnight rain, resulting in the whole field of 38 rescheduled to play in one ‘shotgun start’ in the afternoon. But that had the benefit of ensuring that conditions were the same for all, rather than seeing a big difference in playing conditions between a morning and an afternoon’ flight.
As always the ‘field’ was extremely strong with more than 70% of entrants playing off 20 or less and 40% playing off 15 or less even under the new ‘uplifted’ WHS system. Despite the offer of a free drink for every birdie scored there were only nine shared between eight players, which gives some idea of the degree of difficulty entrants faced; though the unfamiliar and and thought-provoking pin positions may have had something to do with it as well!
This year there were some additional prizes of bar card credits for the 3rd, 4th and 5th places and these went to Colin Harrison, Alan Puddephatt and Chris Newman respectively. The ‘wooden spoon’ went to last year’s winner, Ralph, whose weak excuse was that it had something to do with having to re-organise the whole event on-the-fly after the morning’s course closure!
One of the benefits of winning the Champion of Champions Trophy is that Simon will have 75% of his 2022 subs paid! Ian will have 25% of his subs paid in 2022. Well played Simon and well played Ian!