Northern Counties Boys Championship joy for powerful White Rose outfit
Yorkshire’s four-year run without a win in the Northern Counties Boys Championship was ended in emphatic style at Kendal Golf Club this week.
FORMAT: 36-hole team stroke play (best 5 out of 6 scores to count)
The Tykes recorded the biggest margin of victory in the competition for at least 20 years, finishing 24 shots clear of last year’s national champions Northumberland and the White Rose squad will bid to emulate them at Furness next month (August 23-25).
Such was Yorkshire’s dominance, they had the top three in the individual standings – 2021 Yorkshire Men’s champion Josh Berry (Doncaster), Dylan Shaw-Radford (Huddersfield) and Jake Wallis (Garforth) – while third-placed Lancashire were 16 shots further back in third.
For Yorkshire’s junior organiser Phil Woodcock it was a delight to see the boys flourish while displaying a high level of sportmanship.
“They’ve all prepared well and they’ve come on so much from last year,” said Woodcock, who ably assisted by lead coach Steve Robinson, coach Craig Fricker and Frank Greaves.
“You look at the Fairhaven Trophy and we had four in the top eight and Ben Brown won that while Dylan won the Scotland Boys and Henry Cooper (Junior Masters).
“The really great thing is they all get on. Nothing seems to phase them, they don’t get upset and just get on with it. And the camaraderie between the respective unions is terrific. It was also nice to get comments from the other counties about their terrific scores.”
Romanby’s Brown, who bagged an albatross on his way to victory at the Fairhaven Trophy in May, led the way in the morning with a two-under-par 67, matched by England Boys squad member Berry, who went on to finish as the lowest scorer of the day (134).
Yorkshire were 17 shots clear of Northumberland at halfway but went even lower in the afternoon (five under) thanks mainly to 65s from 2021 English Boys Champion of Champions Shaw-Radford and Wallis, who won the Yorkshire Boys title in 2020.