Six junior golfers from Bathurst headed to Wellington on Sunday to take part in the Western division of the annual Encourage Shield competition and came away with a third place result.

The group was made up of Geoff McDonald, Dom and Ben McCrossin, Emma McCarthy, Ben Mackey and Ben Davis, and they would ultimately come away from the competition in third.

It was a big day for the six, who each played two full matchplay rounds. 

By the end of the competition it was the Lachlan Valley team who took the spoils.

“It was a close competition, Lachlan finished with seven points, Dubbo finished with 6.5 and Bathurst with 4.5 and it was basically only in the last handful of games that finished, that the result was decided,” organiser Bruce McLean explained.

“Some of Dubbo’s players were against some of Bathurst’s, some of the Dubbo and Lachlan players were against each other, so it was all up in the air and could have swung towards any of them.

“Just a couple of halved games probably cost Dubbo and Bathurst.”

The competition pitted players against one another in a handicap matchplay format and for many of them, it was their first real exposure to playing head-to-head golf.

Getting that experience into the players is one of the primary objectives of the entire state-wide championship.

“The teams are all made up of six, and you have to have a handicap above seven if you are a boy, and above eight if you are a girl, so Geoff and Emma from the Bathurst team were right on the cut-off,” McLean said.

“Most of the players have a mark somewhere between 10 and 20. Age-wise they have to be between 12 and 18 but most of them are 15 or younger.

“The whole aim of it is to make sure that if or when these players develop and progress a bit further down the track, they have had some exposure to matchplay golf and know what it is all about.”

As McLean alluded to, head-to-head golf is a different beast to normal strokeplay, and the idea of being perpetually under pressure from every shot your opponent plays is different to the general golf ethos of playing against yourself.

“It can be pretty tough on them, not just playing against one another but having to factor in handicap, and par index and working out which holes they have to give a stroke head-start on,” he said.

“Just the idea of playing two full games in one day is hard on them too, some of them might have finished early but for someone like Geoff, who halved both his games at the end of 18 it is a very long day.

“Lachlan Valley will now go on to play somebody from the Central Coast or North Coast in the next round more than likely.”