Spanish dream cruelly dashed

The Kent Street-based club was in Manchester for the quarter-finals of the Mail on Sunday National Golf Club Classic on Monday with the semi-finals and final to be played in Andalucia during November.

But no play was possible as the worst September storm for 30 years, which caused disruption and travel chaos, left the Marriott Worsley Park course completely flooded.

That meant the semi-finalists were decided by countback on the playing records of the teams over the eight rounds they had played to get there.

Rather than the four highest scoring teams advancing, though, it was done on head-to-head records according to the draw made the previous evening.

Sedlescombe actually had the joint second highest total of the eight teams with 21 points, but their opponents, Farthingstone, had the highest with 25 so the local club was harshly eliminated.

Team captain Alan McDonald: “We went out of the competition on the draw. If we only had 15 points and there were four teams above us it wouldn’t have been so bad, but teams on 17 and 16 went through.”

Sedlescombe had played a practice round on Sunday and had named their five-man team of Mick Anthony, Ray Smith, Trevor Saull-Hunt, Paul Lawrence and Lee Salmon in time for the draw that evening.

See tomorrow’s Hastings and Battle Observers for the full article.