Golf News: - Posted 26th March 1998

Sunningdale Foursomes - Chapman closes on unique double

Sunningdale, Surrey - European Tour player Roger Chapman and Kent amateur Ken Will survived a morning marathon and then three times came from behind to win their quarter-final at the Sunningdale Foursomes over the Old Course at Sunningdale today.

Chapman won this event with George Will, Ken's father, in 1979 and is now only two matches away from completing a unique double of winning with both father and son.

Yet it was touch and go for most of the morning round before Chapman and Will beat the holders, Julie Hall, a former Curtis Cup player, and Helen Wadsworth, who plays on the Women's European tour, at the 24th hole.

Chapman and Will might have won this match at the 18th, where the former's putt for a birdie three finished in the jaws of the hole.

But Will then had to sink a 12-foot putt at the 20th to keep the match alive, while Hall and Wadsworth, who received seven shots in the first 18 holes and two more in the next six, missed a chance of victory when they three-putted the 23rd.

The match finally ended at the 24th where the two men were on the green in two, and got their four, while the two women were in a bunker in two. Wadsworth came out to three feet, but Hall missed the putt to lose an absorbing match.

Then, in the afternoon, Chapman and Will beat Gary Emerson, another European Tour player from Salisbury, and Broadstone professional Nigel Tokely 3 and 2.

Emerson and Tokely led by one hole at the second, fifth and eighth, but each time Chapman and Will battled back and then won four holes running with birdies at the ninth and 10th, winning the 11th with a par-four and the 12th, where they received a stroke.

This put them three holes up, and four successive halves took them through to the last four in which they will meet an amateur pair, Richard Hodgkinson, of Lindrick, and Philip Carr, of Sunningdale.

The other semi-final is an all-professional duel between Warren Bennett, of Sandy Lodge, and Dave Fisher, of Stoke Poges, and Russell Hurd, of The Manor of Groves, and Lee Jones, of Trent Park.

Hurd, the Herts professional champion, and Jones, the Middlesex champion, were five up after 10 holes against Sunningdale pair Rajan Misra and Mark Aubrey-Fletcher but only won on the last green when Jones sank a 15-foot putt.

1998 Press Association