Baxter’s busy but relishing the test
May 21 2009 by Tim Taylor, The Journal
NEWBIGGIN’S head greenkeeper, Drew Baxter, could be excused for feeling nervous as the course awaits the sternest test of its 125-year history, starting with the Northumberland strokeplay championship this weekend.
Three weeks later, the club hosts the first Green Jacket rankings tournament to be held in the county for 10 years, when the ZFL Golf Order of Merit’s elite North East amateurs pitch up for the Mammoet Newbiggin Silver Tankard.
“No worries, we’re all looking forward to both events,” said the 43-year-old Baxter, a former scratch handicap golfer who used to play league golf at No 1 for Newbiggin and Bedlingtonshire, where he was a Hadrian League Player of the Year.
Baxter, who lives in Cramlington, has worked on the 6,723-yard Newbiggin course since he was a teenager and he points out: “The club is very generous indeed with its greenkeeping budget and the lads and myself have the very best of machinery to use.
“It’s a moorland course stretching from Newbiggin to Lynemouth – sticking out on a jutland – and it runs into dunes, creating four links holes between the sixth and the ninth, which is an unusual mixture. The course is in top condition from the start of April until the end of October, so all these crack amateurs will only be getting the same sort of treatment everybody gets when they visit Newbiggin Golf Club.”
Given his playing background, Baxter is well placed to suggest two home club dark horses capable of upsetting the plus-two men in the field – six-time winner Sandy Twynholm, Simon Lee, Craig Penny and Phil Ridden.
Well, dark horses from the same stable, in that brothers Ken and Merrill Lansbury are both scratch golfers. Merrill is clearly the John Daly of Newbiggin in terms of how far he hits the ball.
