The Axe Cliff seniors entertained a strong team from Fingle Glen for what is an annual match, writes Dave Bruce.

The visitors made the most of being able to play on reasonable dry fairways compared to their own clay soil and eventually won by 4-2, but most games were closely fought. However, we perhaps shall not mention the penultimate game of Mick Tomes and Dave Bruce, who took an early bath after the 11th!

Mind you, their opponents would have scored some 50 points if it had been a better-ball stableford. The week saw the much anticipated final round of the Handicap Cup contested by low handicapper Tony Strong and the much-improved John Hanna.

Tony proved too strong and ended a worthy winner, but John can be proud of his efforts in reaching the final, beating some very good players along the way.

The final round of the Winter League was played on Friday in summer-like conditions resulting in great scores over 15 holes.

Dave Weston and Leighton Morgan won with an outstanding 36 points, closely followed by in-form Rob Grove and Simon Wellington with 34 points taking second spot, on countback, from young Sid Pember and Adrian Bishop in third place.

Four players bagged twos, namely Leighton, Ed Backhouse, Adrian Bishop and Perky, oops, Nick Purdy. Sadly the Purdy and Povey team is now disbanded.

Despite the great final effort from Leighton and Dave, they could not catch the overall winners of Brian Thompson and John Hanna, again, who hold onto the Winter League Shield for the second year running.

Their best six rounds totalled 207 points averaging an amazing 34.5 points.

Leighton and Dave were second with 202 points, beating Alan Morgan and Mike Jamieson on countback.

The main Axe Cliff Golf Club played the ninth round of their Winter League competition.

The format was Bogey with some very close results. The overall winner was the in-form Tristan Wakeley with his score of minus two. It was a close call for the minor places with countback in play and that all ended with Alex Taylor edging Andy Moore into third spot after both scored minus three. There was just the one two recorded on the day, scored by Craig Trivett.