Halford Hewitt 2018

The 2018 tournament, where past pupils of 64 schools play a knock-out completion at Royal Cinque Ports, Deal (some matches on the first two days are also played at the neighbouring Royal St George’s), began on Thursday 5th April in sunny but windy conditions.

Rugby were drawn to play Felsted and won all 5 matches in the rubber (each team is 5 foursome pairs) and moved to play Berkhamsted in the second round on the Friday morning, with a breeze that if anything was stronger – it was certainly pretty chilly to be a spectator. The team moved to the third round winning 3.5:1.5 (to be fair, the last match would probably have been a Rugby win too, but the convention is that once a team has one, remaining matches are declared as halved and the players come off the course).

In the third round Rugby met Winchester. Some very good golf was played in these matches but, sadly, with the score at 2:2 the final pair succumbed on the 17th to go down 2 & 1 in that match. Winchester went forward to win the entire competition and their 3:2 win over Rugby was the closest result Winchester had in the tournament.

Alex Fiott (SH 85-90) captained the Rugby side and the ORGS is grateful to Alex Fletcher (SF 75-79) for again providing accommodation for the side. The Rugby pairs were:

Rory Browne (K 07-12) & Jonny Brewer
Jamie Plews (SH 88-93) & Hugh Phillips (T 06-13)
Johnny Walker (Sh 92-97) & Michael Colclasure (T 06-08)
Alex Walker (09-14) & Joe Phillips (T 09-16)*/ David Walker (Sh 93-96)
Alex Fiott & Alex Fletcher
*First round only