Western lead the way in ‘home’ Royal Navy Golf Championship

July saw the golfers from across the Naval Service descend on China Fleet Country Club, Saltash for the Royal Navy Golf Championships.

107 players registered for their chance to become Navy Champion across 4 rounds of strokeplay competition, whilst the 9 best from each region also vied for the matchplay, and team strokeplay titles.

The men played from the white tees and the 8 women entrants played a hybrid ‘orange’ course measured by England Golf which saw them compete at over 6000 yards in an inclusive tournament in which 4 women were included in their Regional matchplay teams on merit.

Monday saw the first 2 rounds of the matchplay round robin take place with the Fleet Air Arm taking both their matches and Western and Royal Marines (RM) winning one a piece.

Northern got into the winner’s circle with victory over Eastern on Tuesday but a commanding victory over RM by Fleet Air Arm (FAA) put them firmly in front. RM and Northern’s tie followed by FAA’s victory over Western on Wednesday afternoon secured victory meaning that a fog delay on Thursday did not cause a major headache for the organising committee as the FAA’s 4 points could not be caught and they were declared the Matchplay champions with the final round being cancelled.

In the strokeplay the scoring was tight in both the men’s and women’s competitions though a number of the usual pretenders failing to keep big numbers off the scorecard meaning their challenge was done. After 3 rounds the leaders of both competitions were just one shot ahead of the chasers. AB Harry Noton leading PO Tom Yates and LET Adam Taylor in the men’s and SET Olivia Trewhela leading ETME Alex Forrest in the women’s competition.

Yates shot a fantastic 72 in the final round to win the men’s competition by 5 from Noton and take the title of Royal Navy Champion with a total of 293. 78 from both leading women saw SET Trewhela maintain her lead to defend the title she won last year (314), whilst a nett 67 saw Lt Cdr Lauren Hulston win the nett (281) by 2 shots from Lt Dan Rome.

The team strokeplay event (best 6 from 9 scores to count) was won by Western Region with a total of 1402, 6 ahead of FAA. Meanwhile in the Overall Team event which enables players from across the handicap spectrum to be part of their team’s final position saw the results from the strokeplay, matchplay and nett (best 4 from 6) all combined to give an overall victor. Western Region again took this with an excellent score of 2272.

The players and organising committee would like to thank China Fleet Country Club and lead sponsors Hythe Engineering for their support of this excellent event, plans are already in progress for the 2025 tournament which takes place at Saunton Golf Club, North Devon.