HEADING into Sunday’s Bathurst Holden Scramble, the team of Dylan Thompson, Aaron Hodges, Glyn Daunt and Dean Oxley had little to no expectations.
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They certainly didn’t envisage winning the Bathurst leg of the country-wide teams event.
But that all changed on the par five, second hole at the Bathurst Golf Course.
After a long bomb drive down the middle of the second fairway, Thompson cracked a remarkable approach shot that landed on the green, finishing 15 feet from the cup.
Up next to putt, Hodges holed the far-from-easy final shot to secure an eagle for the foursome, propelling it to a three-shot Holden Scramble win.
The team produced a five-under round on the front nine before rounding the course with an equally impressive score of five-under off the stick to secure the victory.
The win enables Thompson, Hodges, Oxley and Daunt to get the chance to play alongside Bathurst professional Matt Barrett in the next stage of the tournament.
Thrilled with the victory, Daunt said a team effort was behind the surprise success.
“We didn’t really expect to win,” Daunt said.
“We’d had some good players, Dylan and Aaron were both hitting the ball well. We all chipped in as a team.”
And that’s a fairly new team too.
Daunt said the quartet hadn’t played a lot of tournament golf as a unit, coming together to contest the scramble late in the piece.
“Dean and I play every Thursday and we know the boys from the club, Dylan’s in the pro shop and Aaron’s the green keeper up there,” Daunt added.
He said the team didn’t realise it had won until after submitting their 10-under par scorecard to the club house – but, thanks to a few calculations at the end of the day, they knew they were close.
“We didn’t really know how we’d gone until we put our scores in, we ended up winning by three strokes. We thought eight to 10 under would be enough to win it. It was a nice surprise,” he said.
The Holden Scramble is a teams ambrose event played by teams of four eligible amateurs – all players must have a official Golf Australia Handicap.
The Holden Scramble Regional Finals are the second level of competition in the Holden Scramble and consist of qualifying teams from local Holden Scramble events teaming up with their PGA Club Professional or an “adopt-a-pro” to make a team of five.
The Regional Final series is held throughout October each year.
The winning team from each Regional Final qualifies to attend the Championship Final, where teams get the chance to play with a leading PGA Tour Professional.