On a beautiful sunny Saturday morning our Richmond Park B team made the journey to Epsom to play the Epsom ‘A’ team in the semi-final of the East Section of the Surrey 5s. In their first ‘away’ fixture of the competition, our B team were victorious and now progress to meet the Epsom ‘B’ team in the East Section Final.

The Epsom course was in beautiful condition with perfectly manicured fairways and greens and with more slopes than an Austrian ski resort. An excellent performance by our team saw a resounding 3.5 – 1.5 victory for Richmond Park. The venue and date for the finals match against Epsom ‘B’ is to be confirmed by Surrey County Golf.

Will Balakrishnan led the team off and went down fighting for a 4 & 3 loss to give Epsom an early lead.

Word quickly came through that John Perkins was doing a demolition job on his opponent and levelled the overall score to 1 – 1 with a 7 & 6 victory.

Brendan Sullivan’s 5 & 4 victory established the overall lead in Richmond’s favour to 2 – 1.

Match 4 saw Bernie McDermott relinquish a lead of 3 up with 3 to play to give Epsom a glimmer of hope of winning the point and levelling the overall score to 2 – 2. Before Bernie and his opponent went down the 19th it was agreed to wait and see how match 5 was progressing.

Richmond’s smiling assassin Kevin Prendergast, who should be a ‘postman’ because he always delivers a winning point for the team, didn’t let he team down. His effortless 2 & 1 victory made Bernie McDermott a very happy man and sent Richmond Park into the finals.

Well done and well played everyone.