Win dedicated to mentor Ken

Jun 30 2008 by Tim Taylor, The Journal

PERHAPS Ken Phillips was looking down on Hexham from a 19th hole somewhere in heaven on Saturday and leading the toasts when Mark Penny added the Northumberland Championship to the strokeplay title he won earlier this season.

Penny became the first man to do the county double of matchplay and strokeplay since Sandy Twynholm four years ago, beating Prudhoe’s James Curry 4&3 in the 36-hole final – and, like Twynholm, the 20-year-old Penny represents the Morpeth club.

But Penny was a 14-year-old-member of Newbiggin when he first went for tuition from Phillips, the respected Wallsend club professional who was to become Penny’s mentor and who died earlier this year at 46 after a battle against cancer.

Phillips taught golf brilliantly to thousands and Penny said: “It is strange to think Ken is no longer around. He was like a second father to me.

“He had a way of putting golf across that made everything as simple as possible and a sense of humour in the way he would play little mind games with you.

“I remember driving wildly one day and he said ‘you are too loose’ and he made me do press-ups.

“If Ken was still around I would have taken this trophy to show him and we would have had a good chat about it. I miss him a lot. He was a great guy.”

If there are golf clubs in heaven, they will probably be modelled on Hexham, who have agreed to allow their course to be used for tomorrow’s challenge match between the Hadrian League and The Journal Dream Team while it will still be in majestic condition following the county tournament.

Equally kindly, Penny has accepted an invitation to fill a last-minute vacancy in the Dream Team. It looked as if that invitation would be extended to Curry when he stood three up after 17 holes.

But Curry, the matinee idol of North East golf with his film star looks, lost the last hole of the morning round then the first two when they went out again after lunch and the contest started to drift away from him near the turn.

Penny is halfway through a two-year spell at Odessa College, Texas. Were this slim, ice-cool character ever to end up in Hollywood rather than achieving his ambition of becoming a Tour pro, it would be in roles as a gunslinger capable of facing down any foe.

He never blinked when the contest was going against him and he moved in for the kill when the more volatile Curry, never slow to show his feelings or smack his club angrily against his golf shoe, started to let it slip.

Neither golfer was hitting the ball well, but Penny’s impeccable short game saw him home as Curry went out of bounds at eight, drove into rough at 11, slid a putt 10ft past the flag at 13 and lost the match at 15, where he missed a six-footer.

As Penny was speaking afterwards in the clubhouse, Hexham’s affable club captain, Ian Crawford, who refereed the morning round, came over and told him: “Congratulations Mark, you never let it get to you when you were three down. You just kept plugging away.”

Penny is a man who has always known his mind. When he was a schoolboy midfielder at the Newcastle United Academy, he walked away from his beloved Mags because they told him he couldn’t play football with his pals.

His plans after his next year in the US? “I’ll see where I am, take stock of things – and take it from there.’’