Foxhills to tee off new PGA season
08/05/2015
Surrey will host the curtain-raiser to the new PGA national tournament season when the Senior PGA Professional Championship visits the county’s Foxhills Resort.
The championship, which carries a prize fund of £37,190, will bring some of Great Britain and Ireland’s leading PGA Professionals aged 50 and over to the prestigious venue from May 13-15.
The top 20 finishers will qualify for the ISPS HANDA PGA Seniors Championship at Close House in June where they will tee up alongside the likes of Ryder Cup-winning captain Sam Torrance.
It is the second year running Foxhills has hosted the Senior PGA Professional Championship after bringing the tournament 100 miles south from Northants County where it had been staged for each of the preceding seven years.
Head PGA Professional Paul Creamer is relishing its return after a successful first year during which Downfield’s Kenny Hutton topped the field to claim the Bernard Hunt Trophy.
He said: “We’re proud to host this event, it’s one that fits in nicely with what we’re doing here as a club and it has created a real buzz around the place.
“The members are looking forward to it and I think it gives you that start-of-the-season feeling. Seeing live golf makes you want to get out and play all the more.
“Hopefully the course will provide a good test, the greens will be tricky and the finish to the Bernard Hunt Course is a real test.
“We saw that last year when the tournament was decided at the 18th when Kenny birdied and Albert [MacKenzie, the eventual runner-up] bogied.
The event marks a busy start to the year for Creamer and his team, with Foxhills preparing to host a qualifying event for the Senior Open.
“It is going to be a busy year here,” he explained.
“But we have a full complement of pros here who will be going out and playing and interacting with the members.
“That’s important to us and I’m hoping that having this event here will really help us to kick-start our year.”
Among the field competing at Foxhills will be: Richard Adams (South Winchester), Paul Anderson (Berkshire), Mark Desmond (Swanmore), Dusan Gavrilovic (Studley Wood), Andrew George (Ely City) and Gordon Goldie (Chingford).
