Martellos hitting form at the right time in title defence

Despite the inhospitable weather of Monday evening, the defending champions showed their strength in coming away from the always tough trip to La Grande Mare with a comprehensive 21-5 victory over the Douit Dodgers, a result that leaves the hosts trailing the Royals by 23 points ahead of their clash that concludes the round-robin stage of the competition later this month.

It would now take an upset of gigantic proportions for the ‘Double Ds’ to claim a top-two spot.

As for the Martellos, they appear to repeating their trick of last year when they ended their neighbours’ stranglehold on the Scratch League by building momentum just at the right time.

They claimed four rubbers out of five in this latest outing and were in control of each of those for much of the evening.

The exception came in the first singles match, which was the pick of the draw as the reigning LGM men’s club champion Ollie Chedhomme took on Island champion Danny Blondel in a mouth-watering encounter that lived up to its billing.

More on that later.

The first victory of the night came from L’Ancresse’s gun foursomes pairing of Jamie Blondel and Arthur Evans who, had they being playing in a handicap event, would have been off plus-one.

Taking that into account, Andy Dawson and Rick Le Poidevin knew they had their work cut out and, to be fair, it would have been hard for another combination to live with their opponents in this sort of form as Blondel and Evans wrapped things up in 13 holes.

At 3 up through the turn, it looked as though the other Martellos foursomes duo of Tom Pattimore and Will Davidson could also be on for a bonus-point victory.

However, Tommy Bruley and Ben Hibbins produced a spirited fightback on the back nine to close the gap and earn a bonus in taking it down to the last before the visitors finally sealed victory.

It might have been even better for the host pair had they not suffered the misfortune of conceding the 15th believing their ball to be lost after no one saw the result of a hack out from the left rough, only to find it on their way to the 16th tee.

In the singles, while Chedhomme and Blondel were battling out in the match in front, LGM captain Karl Ogier was pressed into action at the 11th hour following the injury-enforced withdrawal of Neil Black and without having had time to warm up, he was always going to be up against it in facing Jake Marshall.

On his way to a comfortable victory, the L’Ancresse man also became the first player on the evening to register a nearest-the-pin bonus when he found the front portion of the 11th green.

In a bid to save time on such a grey and soggy evening, the fourball clash set off from the 10th and were largely left to their own devices as the four other rubbers drew the ‘crowd’.

L’Ancresse fielded another elite pairing in that format as Martellos captain Steve Mahy joined forces with Danny Bisson and they eventually saw off the stubborn resistance of Tim Halden and Richard Hamilton, with Mahy adding the only ‘NTP’ bonus of the evening registered at the sixth.

With the Martellos’ overall victory long-since secured, Chedhomme v. Blondel took on an intrigue of its own.

Despite the L’Ancresse man being the Guernsey champion, there was an argument for Chedhomme starting out as a slight favourite around his home track.

He made a bright start, too, with his birdie two at the third putting him 2 up and although his opponent hit back by chipping in at the fourth, by the time they reached the turn the teenager was 3 up.

Blondel narrowed the gap by holing a birdie putt at dead-weight on the 10th but it was back to three when Chedhomme made a good up-and-down from through the back of the 12th while his opponent lipped out for par having left himself the longest putt on the green for birdie.

After a couple more halved holes, it looked for all money as if the youngster was about to wrap up victory on the 15th with Blondel having found the penalty area off the tee before clipping the overhanging branch of a tree with his second to leave himself a good 40 yards short of the pin.

There was still plenty of drama to come, though.

The Island champion showed his character to make a terrific par save and, perhaps briefly shaken by that despite being dormy, Chedhomme caught his tee shot at the short 16th a bit thin and went out of bounds to lose the hole.

Blondel then made another composed up and down from the right-hand side of the 17th which Chedhomme failed to match from the left and suddenly they were going down the last.

That was where, though, Blondel made a crucial error in driving into the douit that crosses the fairway and that allowed Chedhomme to plot his way down the par five and when he lagged his birdie putt up to holeside, the game was up for Blondel.