The 14-year-old is already playing in his fifth Junior Inter-Insular and if he were to contribute to a second victory in those editions, he would overtake his dad Dan, the Guernsey team manager, in terms of wins.
‘We’re going to try and win this year because he won one when he was younger. I’m on one already, so I want to try and win this year and beat him with my total,’ said O’Brien junior with a wry smile.
He is quick to adopt a much more serious tone, though, when discussing the team’s chances and despite still having several more years in the under-18 age group, young Lewis is virtually a veteran when it comes to inter-insular weekend and he has words of advice for the newcomers to the team.
‘Just try your best. If you win, be proud of yourself, but whatever happens you’re representing the badge, you’re playing for Guernsey,’ said a teenager who has enjoyed an excellent season and is now down to 2.1 handicap.
‘We all feel good, all excited to try and beat Jersey. We just want to win at the end of the day.
‘We all just need to play our best golf, try our best and hopefully we can do it.’
With his manager’s hat on, O’Brien senior is really pleased with the progress the juniors have made this season and is upbeat about his team’s chances despite being on away soil against the trophy holders.
‘The mood has never been not positive, but when we lost last year, we lost five players [from the age group] and we regrouped, had a meeting and we were struggling to think where we could get five single-figure handicaps from,’ Dan said.
‘But with credit to the boys and the girls, they’ve had an unbelievable season and, again, we’ve probably got one of our best teams ever, the highest handicap is going to be in the region of four or five.
‘They’ve worked so hard, the development programme that we do has actually helped them a lot. We’ve put a lot of time and effort into them to get them in a position of lots of matchplay experience, lots of training just trying to understand their course management a lot more.
‘I think the reason we lost the last two years, we were favourites for last two years, it was down to course management and probably in the mindset going in and thinking we’re going to win. We tried to change them this year to make them realise they’re probably not favourites, and just understand that you’re not out of a hole until you’ve lost a hole as such, but don’t give away holes.’
O’Brien added that it was ‘a really hard decision’ to pick the final 10 with several single-figure handicaps not making the cut and that was credit to all of the players pushing to make the team.
‘They work really hard to make our decision hard, which is what we wanted. We didn’t want an easy decision and it’s respect to the juniors, but also we put a lot of time into the programme and I think that worked.’
He also believes that of the two alternating Jersey courses used for inter-insulars, La Moye will better suit his side than Grouville and it also means that the majority of the home side will not be playing at their home course.
The match gets under way tomorrow lunchtime with the fourball matches followed by the singles on Sunday.
‘We have some strong pairings so we’re looking for a quick start. The first five holes at La Moye are key anyway. After that it opens up a lot more,’ said the manager, whose squad enjoyed a training day at La Grande Mare yesterday to get them in the mindset of playing somewhere new compared to L’Ancresse.
‘We don’t want to be overconfident in ourselves again because you see what happened the last two years, but if we get a strong start and if our more experienced players come through this year, which hasn’t always been the case over the last couple of years, I think it’s going to be a very close game.
‘We need eight points out of 15. It’s seven and a half to draw, but obviously we don’t hold it [the trophy], so eight points out of the 15 is what we need.
‘They’ve all had an unbelievable season and made it difficult for ourselves as selectors, so we’re in a lot better position than we thought we were after losing last year and I think they’re geared up and their mindset is a lot better to go and get the win this year, fingers crossed.’
TEAMS
Guernsey: Felix Marshall, Lewis O’Brien, Lewis Blondel, Josh Neville, Harry Ingrouille, Alex Mills, Tom Chamberlain, Ollie Farmer, Gus Carre, Lily McNeela. Reserve: Charlie-Ray Baker.
Jersey: William Aikenhead, Benjamin Carnegie Bedlow, Oliver Bourke, Ben Carvalho, Bertie Lee, Rafael Leonard, Yiannis Sokrati, Jacob Townsend, Aiden Wilson, Henry Zeale. Reserve: Oliver Brown.
