BREAKING NEW GROUND

The innovative mixed English U18 Championship saw 132 players battling it out for a single trophy at Farnham Golf Club

- MATT CRADDOCK

After the trials and tribulations of a Covid-hit 2020, the English Women’s Amateur was unfortunately cancelled and the decision was made to combine the Men’s and Women’s Amateur Championships at Woodhall Spa. The event turned out to be a great success, which got James Crampton, director of championships at England Golf, thinking.

“We decided we were going to continue with that going forward,” Crampton says, “and I came up with the idea of running an Under-18 Championship where the boys and girls play directly against each other.”

In the past, England Golf’s junior events and championships have been open to international players, with representatives from over 20 countries regularly attending. This new English U18 Championship, open to home players only, was a perfect opportunity to replicate a format that has worked in its men’s and women’s events.

Farnham Golf Club in Surrey was assigned the task of staging the ground-breaking event. Its last ‘big’ competition was held some 26 years ago, the 1995 R&A Senior Amateur Championship. But, with the club celebrating its 125th anniversary, it seemed an ideal venue for this new event.

“For a while now we’ve been keen to host some elite events,” says Ben Beagley, general manager at Farnham Golf Club. In preparation for its quasquicentennial anniversary (yes, there is a word for a 125-year anniversary), the course had undergone a major facelift, quite literally, with new eco-bunkers armed with AstroTurf faces and a different style of sand being plotted around the 6,500-yard layout.