Kelsall king of the castle at London Beach

Kyle Kelsall (Quin Direct Golf) shot a two-under-par 68 to claim victory in the new London Beach Pairs Pro-Am supported by Shepherd Neame ahead of Paul Nessling (Cooden Beach).

In the team event, 18 PGA Professional and amateur pairings battled it out on the wind-lashed London Beach course, with Greg Haenen (PGolfCoaching@Boughton) and his amateur partner Ryan Jones winning the team prize with an impressive nine-under-par team total.

Pentland Golf’s Benn Barham (PGolfCoaching@Pedham) and Bruce McDonald (PGolfCoaching@Etchinghill) were the driving force behind this new profile raising event.

Barham explained: “It started out as an idea a few months earlier as part of our plans to get London Beach on a lot more golfers’ radars.”

He continued: “It’s a very good regional golfing facility and besides the Parkland nine-hole 18-tee golf course, London Beach has some unique coaching and practice features like the nine-hole par-three Championship Chipping Course, the Prestige Putting Course and a ten bay driving range, combined with the ideal clubhouse facilities for societies, corporate entertaining and casual golfers.”

His Pentland Golf colleague McDonald said: “A lot of hard work went into getting the condition of the course as good as it could be. Everything was going to plan, and then we had all that rain within a few days of the event, but thanks to Simon and his greenkeeping team London Beach’s course and greens was in terrific condition on the day.”

He added: “However, 50 mph winds made things a lot more interesting, even for some of the top players in the region. All the same, the club did itself proud and delivered terrific hospitality, great food and a course in top nick on which all the players thoroughly enjoyed competing.”

Courtesy of Hurricane Gonzalo, the course near Tenterden proved a different scale of challenge to the competitors, but with five birdies on his card Kelsall mastered the conditions to see off the one-under-par performance of Nessling, a five time winner in 2014.

Underlining how difficult conditions were, they proved to be the only players to break par, with Greg Haenen, Charlie Wilson (Littlestone) and Thomas Muchmore (Ashford) all tying for third place on one-over-par.