HOW Hampshire go about topping arguably the most successful season in their 125-year history will be on the minds of all those connected with the county golf union (writes Andrew Griffin).
The new season for Hampshire’s top amateurs does not really get underway until the annual fixture between the county men and the Hampshire PGA professionals at Alresford on Sunday, April 8 – the final day of the Masters at Augusta. However, planning begins with the first-team squad getting together in February and March.
When Harry Ellis claimed the Amateur Championship at Royal St George’s last year, Hampshire became the first county to produce different champions back-to-back. Scott Gregory had won at Royal Porthcawl in 2016.
The current crop of county stars have to go some to progress through two rounds of strokeplay and five knockout rounds just to reach the 36-hole final at Royal Aberdeen from June 18-23, when the R&A take the world’s oldest amateur championship north of the border again.
.jpeg?width=209&height=140&crop=209:145,smart&quality=75)
Having taken 121 years to produce one home-grown champion, a hat-trick of titles would seem statistically unlikely – especially given that Ellis will be denied a chance to become the first player to retain the Amateur Championship since Peter McEvoy in 1978. Ellis will be playing in the US Open which returns to Shinnecock, on New York’s Long Island, for the first time since Retief Goosen’s win in 2004.
That should be Ellis’s third appearance in a major, following his Open debut at Royal Birkdale last July and the traditional invitation to play in the Masters, which arrived at his Hedge End home during his short trip home over Christmas.
Ellis was working hard with Wentworth-based coach Kristian Baker before flying back to Talahassee to rejoin his college team-mates in preparation for the spring season at Florida State University.
The 22-year-old had been hoping to play in this week’s European Tour in Abu Dhabi, but by the time a rare amateur invitation was issued by the tournament organisers late last week, there was not enough time for Ellis to fly from Florida to the Gulf state in time to prepare.
Ellis believes being in the States for the first three months of 2018 would be the perfect preparation for his attempt at competing for a fabled Green Jacket.
County team-mate Scott Gregory travelled to Australia as the reigning Amateur Champion last January in search of some warm weather golf, but spent several weeks without any competitive play before Augusta.
The Meon Valley member is a year younger than Gregory, who joined the professional ranks after his Walker Cup appearance against the Americans in September. But while Gregory is off on a new adventure playing on the European Challenge Tour, Ellis should have five events to play for the Florida Seminoles between now and the end of March.
And FSU – working with their widely respected coach Trey Jones – have some of the best golfing facilities in the NCAA system, which has produced the likes of Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas and Rickie Fowler in the past decade, plus the FSU’s own major winner, Brooks Koepka, last year’s US Open champion, who regularly practices with Ellis.
Ellis will also have the traditional warm-up the week before the Masters when he plays the American Amateur champion, Doc Redman, in the Georgia Cup at the Golf Club of Georgia. The British champions have dominated the event in recent years, winning six of the last seven clashes, with Gregory beating Curtis Luck of Australia in 2017.
While Harry Ellis is heading for a date down Magnolia Lane and the colourful azaleas and rhododendrons that fill the Augusta National Golf Club in the spring, back home his county team-mates will be preparing for their season curtain-raiser the following weekend at Blackmoor. The Selborne Salver is held on April 14 and, 24 hours later, the Hampshire Hog takes place at Fleet.
It is ten years since a Hampshire player held either trophy aloft, Hayling’s Mark Thistleton winning a play-off at Blackmoor in 2007.
Rowlands Castle’s Billy McKenzie will be looking to hit the ground running in what could be his final season as an amateur, having finished his four-year stint at William Woods University as one of the highest ranked college players in the NAIA system.
The left-hander was a member of the Hampshire team that claimed their first English County Championship in 21 years – since Justin Rose was a teenager wearing the county’s light blue colours.
Having been nominated for the Jack Nicklaus Award three years running in the US, McKenzie will be keen to show how far his game has progressed since heading for Missouri in 2013.
He reached the Hampshire Amateur quarter-finals three years in a row from 2013, but missed the trip over to Royal Jersey last summer.
His most impressive displays in the UK came in winning The Berkshire Trophy over Ascot’s two premier heathland courses in 2015, followed by victory in the Tillman Trophy, at East Sussex National, in 2016.
While a major trophy eluded him in 2017, seasoned amateur golf watchers believe McKenzie has the talent to emulate Ellis and Gregory at the highest levels in English golf, having also played in two English County Finals in a row and helped Hampshire to that famous win at Trevose, in September.
McKenzie is almost certain to miss this summer’s County Championship, which again clashes with the St Andrew’s Links Trophy in early June.
But the 22-year-old, who played in the same East Lodge juniors football team as Southampton’s England midfielder, James Ward-Prowse, will be looking for a strong showing in May’s Lytham Trophy before heading to Oxfordshire’s Frilford Heath for the English Amateur Strokeplay Championship at the end of the month.
He will also be hoping to follow clubmate Darren Wright in lifting the Brabazon Trophy. Wright won at Royal Liverpool in Hoylake in 2010 and this was followed by Corhampton’s future Walker Cup player Neil Raymond’s historic back- to-back wins at Burnham & Berrow and Walton Heath.
The Brabazon (May 31-June 3) is a week before the leading amateurs, including McKenzie, head to the home of golf for the St Andrews Links, while those county players, who do not have a low enough handicap to survive the ballot will travel to Liphook for the 113th Hampshire Amateur Championship (June 8-10).
Hampshire Golf celebrates the county golf union’s founding in 1894 with a return to the East Hampshire heathland course – renowned for its super-fast greens – for the first time since 2009 when Rowlands Castle’s Tom Robson broke into the first-team picture with a play-off win over Hayling’s Toby Burden.
Robson has since lost in two more finals – to Hayling’s Darren Walkley at Brokenhurst Manor in 2015 and, 12 months later, to county captain Martin Young at Hayling. But last year he became the third different player to win the Cullen Quaich after leading the Hampshire Order of Merit in 2017. Walkley won the first two in 2014 and 2015 before Colin Roope of Blackmoor triumphed in 2016.
Alresford will host the Hampshire Junior Championships for the first time since 2003 when the host club’s Charlie Swann was the winner of the boys title and Lee-on-the-Solent’s Sam Hutsby claimed the U15s trophy. Since then, Ellis (2010 and 2013) and Brokenhurst’s Jordan Ainley – the first and last player to win the Hampshire boys and men’s title in the same season in 2012 – have claimed the U18 title twice each.
There are also trophies for the best U14, U15 and U16 scores.