National prize for Twynholm

Oct 3 2008 by Tim Taylor, The Journal

THE Journal Champion of Champions, Sandy Twynholm, has won the HSBC Golf World Champion of Champions, a national tournament open to the 3,000-plus golf club champions in Great Britain and Ireland.

The 43-year-old from the Morpeth club, shot a par 69 in the first round over an Ailsa Course at Turnberry reduced by the weather to 6,390-yards – and followed it up the next day with a 70 to romp home five shots clear of the rest of the 55-man field in the final.

“It was a sensational performance,” said Chris Jones, editor of Golf World magazine. “European Tour professionals such as Ross Fisher and Gary Lockerbie have reached the finals when they were amateurs without winning it and this is a trophy which takes a lot of capturing.

“We put on 11 regional qualifying tournaments over Britain and Ireland and only five get through to the final from each one. They are the top five from a field full of club champions, so the standard at the final is always sky-high.”

Twynholm, a geographical information systems development manager for neighbourhood services with Newcastle City Council, was already a legend in North East golf. Last year, he won the Northumberland strokeplay championship for a record sixth time.

Three years ago, one of his scorecards from the British Mid-Amateur Championship was pinned up on the Muirfield clubhouse wall, alongside scores from earlier decades returned by multiple major winners such as Nick Faldo and Walter Hagen.

Twynholm’s impression on Muirfield was made when he set the amateur course record of 67 playing off the Open Championship tees, when the fearsome track was the longest it has ever been at 7,034 yards.

It is a record the former Scotland international still holds at the world’s oldest golf club, which was formed in 1774 and has been host to 15 Opens, none of which have seen an amateur match Twynholm’s score.

His latest triumph saw him win a Scotty Cameron putter, as used by Tiger Woods, the Waterford Crystal trophy and three year’s free subscription to Golf World.

His runaway victory came in foul conditions at Turnberry with the Ayrshire coast ravaged by violent rainstorms and winds of up to 40mph.

Jones added last night: “Colin Montgomerie and Paul Casey played the same course in the same conditions in an HSBC corporate tournament on Monday – the day before our event started – and neither of them could break par.

“I think that puts Sandy Twynholm’s performance into context. I sat next to him at the gala dinner after our Golf World tournament and another finalist, Russell Hahoe, from the Ponteland club, summed up Sandy’s game well. Russell said ‘Sandy is not a big hitter, but he keeps the ball so straight he can put a 3-wood more on line with the target than the rest of us can with an eight-iron’.

“Sandy was doing this in conditions so bad that Turnberry was closed for two hours on the first day of our tournament and that was the first time that had happened in five years.”

Twynholm qualifies automatically for next year’s final and, as The Journal Champion of Champions, he also qualifies automatically to defend that trophy at De Vere Slaley Hall on March 29. Twynholm said: “My daughter, Tara, who is now 12 weeks old, was due shortly after my Golf World national qualifier at Roxburghe in Kelso.

“I was up there wondering whether the baby was going to be a few days early, which would have meant I would have gone straight home to my wife, Susi.

“That did not happen – but if it had, I would never have gone on to Turnberry in the first place.”