Yorkshire’s boys’ team were crowned county champions for a record 11th time after edging Hampshire 5-4 on a dramatic final day at Goswick Golf Club.
The two oldest men’s counties in English golf went head-to-head on the final day, with Hampshire needing to win to become champions for the first time in their history while Yorkshire just needed to avoid defeat.
The Yorkshire team – Zac Ayre, George Cooper, Tom Hartshorne, Archie Palmer, Harry Phillips, Ollie Scott and Seth Topham – held firm on the final day to complete a 5-4 win, winning the foursomes session 2-1 and sharing the points in the six singles matches, with three wins for each side, to lift the trophy.
Yorkshire boys’ chairman and team manager Phil Woodcock said: “It’s terrific, the boys have been tremendous. We work hard, we do the coaching through the winter, and through the summer we have the league matches, so there’s a lot of preparation that goes into this and the guys have worked tremendously hard to achieve this.”
George, Yorkshire’s star player at Goswick who won all six of his matches, added: “I’ve played pretty steady all week. I just kept telling myself to keep my head down and keep going, and to try and stay positive, and thankfully it’s worked.
“We’ll be celebrating by going out for a meal and we’re looking forward to the county dinner!”
Yorkshire and Hampshire won both their matches on the first two days of the event, seeing off Nottinghamshire and Somerset to setup a final-day showdown.
Max Blake was Hampshire’s star player, picking up five points from six, with Tom also enjoying the same record. The only other unbeaten player for the week was Seth, who won all three of the singles matches he played.
Meanwhile, Nottinghamshire finished third in the points table after beating Somerset 6.5-2.5 on the final day.
In a rather unusual stat for the week, just two of the 54 matches across the three days finished all-square. Check out all the results here and read the full reports from each day here.
