What fantastic weather we had today out on the Links. Dry, sunny, warm and with just a light breeze, basically everything you could ask for from a day’s golf. No excuses from anyone today, apart from the usual ones.

94 players took part in this year’s Goodman Trophy, which is held in honour of Ernie Goodman, the previous Professional here at St Enodoc before Nick Williams.

Last year’s winner was Greg Mather, who produced a fabulous nett 66, so the pressure was on for Greg to retain the trophy. Greg was second out today and managed a respectable nett 74. Sadly for Greg, respectable wasn’t going to cut it today and the trophy was already looking for a new home.

The course was playing magnificently and it was clear that someone was going to have to produce a very good score to take the honours.

The first decent score to appear was Nick Shelley with a nett 69. Then Matt Warr raised the bar with a nett 65, which kept Matt at the top of the leaderboard for a whole hour, although I’m sure it felt considerably longer to him!

Then Guy Court came in with a fabulous nett 63 and suddenly everyone else had something to chase. Guy held the lead for the next three hours and was beginning to look like he might be getting his hands on the trophy.

That was until Shane Dingle decided he fancied a bit of the action and also posted a nett 63, beating Guy on the back 9. Shane also managed three birdies, which was three more than his elder son Kai could produce. I’m sure there will be some family discussion about that one later.

It looked like Shane had done enough and the trophy was heading his way, but there was still one group out there, and as we all know, golf has a habit of keeping the best drama until the very end.

Questions started coming from the last group as to what was winning, as they clearly thought they might have a contender in their midst. The tension mounted as I checked the card and entered the score…………..

And then came the result.

Congratulations to Nigel Buse, who produced a very impressive nett 63 to snatch the trophy right at the death, winning on the back 9 by one shot. The trophy was presented to Nigel in the bar, which brough huge cheers from everyone.