Captain Kavan Smith Leads the Way for Balby Academy’s Golfers to Golfing Dominance at Woodhall Spa Monday 24th May 2010   Bracken Course - Woodhall Spa Golf Club - Wednesday 19th May 2010   Balby Academy of Sport, after a series of under par matches, returned to form on Wednesday to completely dominate the fields at the home of English Golf at Woodhall Spa. Balby were trailing in the league in 3rd place, 4 points behind Huddersfield New College and 3 behind Lincoln College.   They needed a dominant performance on the USGA specification style par 72 Bracken Course to get them back into first place in the league. The course is a real test of golf especially as they were playing off the championship tees at 6800 yards long. Things were not looking great when the team arrived later than expected and with no real warm up time other than a few putts to get them ready to play. After such a good performance at the Fairhaven Trophy, the form of Jamie Harrison was expected to play well. However after just 10 holes Jamie had to withdraw with a trapped nerve in his neck. Other team stalwarts were finding the tricky course very challenging and not playing to their usual high standards. However Amy Marper (pictured right), playing in her first college match since surgery on her troublesome wrist, was in fine form. After a trying first hole Amy recovered to score a gross 79 including a ten on her first hole to score 39 points. This now reduces her handicap back to 4. This was a fantastic performance having not played the course before securing Amy first place in the individual stableford competition.   For the team score we still needed another stableford and gross score to count. Up stepped Captain Kavan Smith to play his best round for the academy. With the previous best gross score of the day to come in being a 73 from a +1 handicap golfer (1 better than scratch), we could tell that the course was playing really difficult. However Kavan, (pictured left) played a controlled game with a 3 under par 69 with not a bogey on his card and 3 birdies. He himself summed it up with “I just played sensible, keeping the ball in play rather than going for the difficult or flashy shots”. This meant that Kavan won the individual competition by a full 4 shots, from 2 other players. With the conditions making the course play difficult, Kavan managed to reduce his playing handicap 1 (from 0.5) to scratch (+0.1). This is a tremendous achievement as he joined the academy 18 months ago with a handicap of 6.   This score was added to the score produced by Amy to give Balby Academy of Sport a team score of 10 under par. This gave Balby Academy of Sport 1st place by 9 full shots from Lincoln College. This means that Balby Academy of Sport have moved back into 1st pace in the league, leading Huddersfield by 1 point and Lincoln by 2 points. With just the final game of the season to come at Retford on the 9th June, Balby are confident that home advantage in the last game will help them secure first place in the league.   After a highly successful year for Balby Academy of Sport golfers in which they won their national ICT Tour league, the South Yorkshire Schools, Doncaster Schools, 7th place in the British Colleges at St Andrews, Scotland, a successful tour to the Costa Blanca in Spain and will represent Yorkshire Schools in the English Schools Team Championships in Dorset in July, the team travelled to the culmination of their Intercollegiate Tour finals both Individually and as a Team.. Lets hope that we can secure the Yorks / Lincs Shield as well   If anyone would like further information about how to join or sponsor our highly successful golf academy please contact: i.lindley@balbycarr.org.uk   Ian Lindley Golf Academy Director