Hola AMIGOS
What a fantastic day we had at Villamartin for the inaugural Golden Bear vs Amigos challenge match that celebrated the 10th Anniversary of the Golden Bear Golf Society from its creation in 2013 by Hans Nout and Andy Harvey. The golf was followed by a grand Tapas dinner at El Cason where winners were announced and the trophy presented. No-one bar the adjudicator (me) knew the results until it was announced in the evening.

60 players took part in the event, which was structured as a Matchplay betterball, whereby 15 pairs formed an Amigos team and another 15 pairs formed the Golden Bear team. The object of the exercise was to  win you specific team event and score your team a 1 point WIN, first team to 8 points wins the trophy. In the unlikely event that it would be a draw in 'matches won' we told all players to play the full 18 holes and we would record the total number of holes won by each team (boy - was that a good idea).

As the teams started to complete their rounds it began to look like it could be a walkover with Amigos having won 5 of the first 6 teams to complete - how could Golden Bear come back from this? As the later players arrived it became clear that Captain Hutchinson had a cunning plan and the Golden Bear team started to build up their wins tally - could we see another 'Miracle at Medina'. Scoring was generally quite close but then we had our first 'halved' game and our first really big win in an individual game (10 - 3 to Golden Bear), maybe that would be important come the end of the day!

As the last group started the 18th it was 7.5 - 6.5 to Amigos with Captains Field & Hutchinson in a head-to-head in the last group. Unfortunately Captain Field was having one of those rounds that you just want to forget (we've all had them), so the onus was on Amigos vice captain Harry Rice to steal the last and halve the game, to win the trophy. It proved to be 'a bridge too far' and Captain Hutchinson led his team to a win on the last which was good enough to secure a win in their game. Unbeknown to them, this took the scores to 7.5 vs 7.5, so we would need to separate the teams based on the total number of holes won by each team.

Garry Wilkinson's & Pat Gingell's magnificent 10-3 win now came back to bite the Amigos team with the Golden Bear achieving 89 Wins to the Amigos 86 Wins.

CONGRATULATIONS to the Golden Bear team and Captain Hutchinson, who win the inaugural Golden Bear vs Amigos challenge trophy.

What a day and we will definitely do it all again (at Lo Romero) in 2024.
Hasta luego
Brian