Gaudion's men ease into sevens final
LA GRANDE MARE will face the Royal Guernsey in this year's Guernsey section final of the Hampshire Seven-a-side Knockout after the two teams won their semi-final matches against St Pierre Park and L'Ancresse respectively.
LA GRANDE MARE will face the Royal Guernsey in this year's Guernsey section final of the Hampshire Seven-a-side Knockout after the two teams won their semi-final matches against St Pierre Park and L'Ancresse respectively. Lloyd Gaudion's La Grande Mare men made relatively light work of the challenge from St Pierre Park, while the absent John Herschel would have heard the news that his Royal Guernsey team had a much tougher time against their neighbours.
On paper it was always going to be a close tie between the Royal and L'Ancresse, but with three of the Royal team players receiving handicap reductions only three days before the L'Ancresse captain, Tim Mileham, could have been excused for believing his side were slight favourites going into the tie.
But for a disappointed Mileham it was not to be as the Royal stole victory by the narrowest of margins with two out of the seven rubbers going to extra holes.
Early out for the L'Ancresse side was Danny Bisson, who seemed to struggle in finding the pace of the greens during his match against the Royal's David Rowlinson.
But with some remarkable recovery play towards the end of the round, Bisson managed to claw back a three down deficit.
At the first extra hole both players missed their chances to take the match as a par would have been good for the win.
At the 20th hole, however, Rowlinson made no mistake in clinching a valuable point to add the one of Mick Marley whose steady performance against L'Ancresse's Mick Hamon earned the Island Games silver medallist a 4 and 2 victory.
The Royal's two-point lead was soon halved as the in-form Andy Eggo closed out his game against Nigel Vaudin on the 15th green.
At the same time L'Ancresse's Ian Thomas was taking Guernsey's elite golfer Bobby Eggo down a second play-off hole.
With Eggo off a plus-three handicap and Thomas off three, courtesy of the new stroke indexes at the L'Ancresse links, Thomas had a shot at the par four second hole, their 20th.
A par, net birdie, was always on the cards for Thomas, forcing Eggo to produce heroics.
But, for once, he could not and the match was tied two apiece, leaving the spectators looking back down the course to see where the next two crucial points would come out of the remaining three matches.
Danny Blondel, who has an excellent inter-insular singles matchplay record, could not emulate this form for his club and suffered a last hole defeat at the hands of the Royal's David Nicolle.
As they were shaking hands on the 18th green, back on the 15th L'Ancresse's Steve Mahy was offering commiserations to his one time team-mate Laurence Graham.
All eyes were now focused on the relatively inexperienced Tim Carter for the L'Ancresse side and John Le Lievre for the Royal Guernsey.
After an up-and-down battle over the opening 12 holes Le Lievre opened some daylight after a birdie at 13 put him in a two-up lead.
Carter, however, responded with a 200-yard four-wood approach to within eight feet at the long 14th hole to earn a birdie of his own and the deficit was reduced to one hole once again.
But a wayward tee shot at 15 that found the stony path would lead to Carter's undoing.
His resulting bogey five was no match for Le Lievre's regulation par and the latter continued his methodical regulation golf over the following two holes and with Carter just missing out on his birdie at 17 Le Lievre's six-footer for a birdie was duly conceded and with it the Royal Guernsey were through to the final.
In comparison, La Grande Mare had a convincing 6-1 win over St Pierre Park with the scoreline doing little to flatter a determined away team.
Hedley Ablitt (5) was the lowest handicapper on show for La Grande Mare and his 3 and 2 win over James Le Cras (10), coupled with Jim Banks (9) 3 and 2 win over Ian Carre (12) got the westerners off to a flying start.
What would be St Pierre Park's only win soon followed, the consolation point coming from Tom Vaughan.
But St Pierre Park were in need of a minor miracle if they were to turn around any of the following three matches as Greg Allison, Emyr Davies and Ricky West all appeared in control of their ties further down the course.
St Pierre Park's Steve Gibbons (17) tried in vain to peg back Allison (8) at the last, but when he fell to a two down defeat La Grande Mare had reached the four-point milestone and were in the final.
On the toss of a coin, Royal Guernsey captain Herschel won his club the right of home advantage for the final on Thursday 20 May.
nPETER CROOK and Andre Bisson won the two most importtant of the 17 prizes on offer at the Royal Guernsey's HSBC and Bank of Bermuda-sponsored Senior and Junior Cups event.
Crook, a 21 handicap, headed the Junior Cup field with a seven under total of net 63.
In the contest for the Senior Cup, Bisson (9 handicap) stroked 10 pars and two birdies during his round of 75 for a net 66.
Runner-up Andy Marley (14 handicap) parred six of the last seven holes to return home in 38, whilst third-placed Ricky Leslie (17) also enjoyed gross pars over the final four holes for his own round of 66.
Just outside the top five was Mark Allez (5), whose recent transition from the L'Ancresse Golf Club to the Royal Guernsey appears to be paying early dividends.
Bobby Eggo returned to plus three handicap status by dropping just one shot in his round of 66 gross, which was a superb effort taking into consideration the slow speed of the greens.
Nigel Vaudin collected the second scratch prize with a level par 70 and young Shaun Mills birdied the last hole to card a net level par round off his seven handicap to land the juniors' prize.
Over at the L'Ancresse a field of over 130 turned out for the maiden run of the Chariot's Bookmakers Classic.
Although not quite yet of legal betting age junior Ross Allen eclipsed the field by five shots to post the day's lowest score.
The Rangers and Guernsey under-18s' striker shot an eight under par net 62.
Birdies at the second, sixth and 13th holes would be Allen's highlights and he may well have broken 60 had he not suffered a quadruple-bogey eight at the par four 17th.
Being a junior he was not eligible for the major honour which went to Chris Le Tisiser on countback from Neil Mechem and Harry Prince. All three carded 67s.
In the gross standings there was no touching Andy Eggo, who despite feeling a little under the weather, fired four birdies in his one under par round of 69.
Eggo now finds himself just one good round away from reaching scratch handicap status.
