bunkered Scottish Club Championship

Club Championship gets a big thumbs up

Don’t be surprised if, over the next 12 months, you see the members of Dumbarton Golf Club walking around with their chests puffed out and their heads held high.

As members of Scotland’s champion club, they’ve earned the right.

Indeed, it was the west of Scotland club– represented by Martin Gannon, Michael Eyton, Gary O'Brian and Mo Buchanan – that scooped first place in the inaugural bunkered Scottish Club Championship grand final held at the Westerwood Hotel, Golf & Country Club.

The quartet did battle with 15 other teams on a day of high spirits and quality golf, and their score of 129 was five better than their closest rivals, Bishopbriggs, could muster.

As such, they made certain that Dumbarton Golf Club was the first recipient and the first name engraved on the Scottish Club Championship shield, while also winning the club a cool £2,500.

The four players, meantime, walked away with their own individual shields and a brand new set of custom-fitted golf clubs each. Top prizes, you’ll agree, but no more than you’d expect for winning such a prestigious title.

Launched at the start of the year, the bunkered Scottish Club Championship aimed to do what no other tournament had ever truly done before: identify and crown Scotland’s best-performing golf club.

Just under 100 clubs took part in the competition – a superb number for the first year of the competition – and they were organised, at random, into nine separate divisions.

Each club was asked to nominate ten events from their calendar of competitions, from which the winning scores – in relation to the competition standard scratch – were added together to determine how far up in their divisions each club finished. The better their winning aggregate, the higher up their division they finished.

At the end of qualifying, 18 clubs – two from each division – won through to the grand final. And, despite two clubs being unable to compete, it proved to be an immensely successful occasion.

The unique format of the final played its part in making the day such a massive success. Each team represented the full cross-section of a golf club with one male, one female and one junior member a requirement for all participating teams. The fourth player could be chosen at the club’s discretion from its membership.

The final took a Stableford format with a full-handicap allowance and all four scores counting. Therefore, a real team effort was needed to assure victory.

Westerwood, located just outside Glasgow, proved to be as good a challenge as expected. Not only is the course up to championship standard, it is also rare to play it without a little wind coming into play – and so it proved on this occasion.

Nonetheless, the teams were up for the battle and, after being welcomed to Westerwood with a bunkered goodie bag for each player, it was time to do battle.