Licata gunning for hat-trick of wins in Marston Matchplay

Defending champion Giuseppe Licata will be bidding for a fifth victory in the annual Matchplay Championship where a total of 16 PGA Professionals from Gloucestershire and Somerset will be kicking off their winter season this week.  

On Wednesday the leading 16 ranked players from last season’s Total Triumph Order of Merit standings will line up for two days battle over the testing Beaufort course and if the previous three stagings are anything to go by, there will be some very competitive golf on show.

The event is once again is kindly sponsored by Marstons and returns to Chipping Sodbury Golf Club for a fifth consecutive year.

Licata, from the host club, returns as top seed after topping last season’s Order of Merit. The teaching professional and current Captain of the two counties will be hoping to secure his fifth Matchplay crown and with it complete a record breaking hat-trick of successive wins in the event. A win would also move Licata level with Denis Scanlan’s record haul of five wins in the event.

Fifteen other players have other ideas though and will be trying to be the first player to beat him over his home course which hasn’t happened since the event moved there back in 2013.

Licata won that first staging but was unable to defend his crown 12 months later as he withdrew due to the imminent birth of his second child.

The first player to have that opportunity to dislodge Licata will be Mendip Spring’s big hitting Assistant Will Hobbs in the opening Championship game at 8.30am on the opening morning.

Second seed Russ Berry (Broadway) takes on Pete Garratt in an all Gloucestershire tie with Cirencester top man and third seed Ed Goodwin, another multiple past winner of the title, taking on Orchardleigh’s Charlie Cossins.

Three time past Champion George Ryall (Burnham & Berrow) is the fourth seed and faces Nick Ellis (Naunton Downs) in the opening round.

As with last year, the first round losers will go forward into a Plate competition although last year’s winner Robin Goodey would probably prefer not to defend that title.

A prize fund of £2.5k is on offer to the players thanks to the generous support from Marston’s, making it the largest prize fund on offer in many years.

Play gets underway with the first round matches commencing from 8.30am on Wednesday morning and spectators are more than welcome to come and watch the action free of charge.