Golf's new programme gets credit

NOBODY should be getting too carried away, but suddenly there are rays of light bursting into what in the autumn was the dark tunnel that represented competitive domestic golf. In the space of three weeks, Jack Mitchell, 20, has become the youngest island men's champion in decades, the Guernsey Junior Golf Club have turned over both the Royal and L'Ancresse clubs to reach the CI Hampshire Sevens final and a youngish player, Steve Mahy, has gone all the way to the county final.

Hard work by the players concerned and the new development programme put in place by Roy Bushby, the Guernsey Golf Union's new head coach, are being heralded as the reasons for the sudden upturn in fortunes.

'It's very encouraging,' agreed Steve Turvey, the senior island team captain who is naturally keen to end a run of three straight inter-insular defeats in September.

'I think it's all down to the golf development set up by the GGU,' said Turvey.

The three players to stand out are Mahy who before his surprisingly successful county championship run to the final, made it to the semi-finals of the island championship only to lose to a rejuvenated Mitchell.

Then there is the remergence of another former island junior champion, Danny Blondel, who made it to the semi-finals of the county championships where, just like Mahy, he succumbed to the consistent excellence of Ryan Henley.

'He can string numbers together quite easily.

'The results they've all been having is down to their training sessions through the golf-development programme put in place by Roy Bushby.

'They have continued to carry on with the training programme and a lot of it is mental and a lot of it swing technique.'

Bushby is also enthused by the early results.

'It all started with the juniors and the way they stuffed the Royal and then beat L'Ancresse.

'The programme is helping and working, although we were primarily targeting the younger ones.

Certainly nobody could have predicted such convincing performances by the likes of Mahy and Blondel. Were odds available on four home qualifiers on the last 16, they would have favoured the likes of Mitchell, Bobby Eggo, Danny Bisson and Nigel Vaudin.

One bad round cost Mitchell who started well, Eggo was just edged out and Vaudin was always up against it after an opening 77.

As you might expect for someone who consistently produces in strokeplay events, Bisson qualified but then managed to lose an eminently winnable last-16 match against Jerseyman Alex Guelpa. Should Bisson manage to transfer his week-by-week form to the cut and thrust of head-to-head matchplay, then Turvey will have even more reason to be confident of stopping the red surge.