The Golf At Goodwood Juniors headed to the Home Nations Finals full of confidence that they could repeat their wonderful achievement of 2022 by winning the event.

This year’s Finals saw a field of twelve teams, which included three teams from Ireland, across the two courses Portal and Hill Valley. Unfortunately, neither course was up to the expected standard in terms of the playing conditions which was disappointing and it created much frustration amongst the players.

The qualification for the knock out stages involved four separate 9-hole strokeplay competitions over the first two days. At the end of day one Goodwood were in third place with the top four teams to qualify for the Championship Semi Finals.

Day two was at Portal and the length of the course, nearly 7,000 yards took its toll and then team unfortunately, didn’t quite have what was needed to make the top four places.

The team were frustrated however had the opportunity to finish fifth overall by winning their two remaining matchplay matches. The first was against West Derby from Liverpool who were certainly ‘up for it’ having lost out to Goodwood at the English Finals back in October. The Goodwood team came into their own in matchplay and this came to the fore with a comfortable 6–2 win.

This lined up an exciting Final against Burhill, who similarly, sought revenge for losing out in October. A few tweaks to the order played out well with the boys playing great golf and coming out winning 5.5–2.5. A solid defence of the title further enhancing the reputation of Goodwood for matchplay competition.

Some notable performances from the week were; Cameron McLeod who used the experience gained last year to perform brilliantly over the four days; Freddie Gillett whose matchplay results were mightily impressive and Tom Bissatt (the Captain) who led from the front in the matchplay format.