Benn goes from strength to strength to seal Forest Pines place

Kings Hill Golf Club’s Benn Barham continued his dream year by winning the final Golfbreaks.com PGA Fourball Championship qualifier at Epsom Golf Club.

Barham (pictured on right) partnered his club colleague Mark Trow (left) at the Surrey venue and although they carded an impressive-10 under-par round of 60, they only won by one shot ahead of the host pairing of David Bright and Alex Vezey.

They will be joined by eight other qualifiers at the £28,750 final, supported by BMW, which will be held at Forest Pines Hotel on Lincolnshire on October 2-4.

For Ex-European Tour player Barham, his 2013 is going from strength to strength three years after being treated for kidney cancer.

He finished third in the PGA Professional Championship at De Vere Slaley Hall back in June, which earned him a place in the GB&I team for next month’s PGA Cup match against the USA which will be played at the same venue.

Now Barham has booked his place in another final.

His playing partner Trow is looking forward to representing the Kent club in the final.

He said: “It’s been a good year for Benn and he’s playing well at the moment.

“He’ll have a busy few weeks coming up with the PGA Cup and then Forest Pines with myself.

“I just hope he carries me around the same way he did at Epsom!

“But the way we performed I’d like to think we stand a chance of being up there among the challengers.”

Trow pointed to a blistering spell midway through the round that took them top of the leaderboard.

He said: ‘We got eight birdies in a row and scored well so we knew we would do enough to qualify in the top 10.

“But we were surprised how low the scoring was as the greens were very tricky out there.”