Newark steal final spot after Enville late show

Newark Golf Club squeezed into the SkyCaddie PGA Pro-Captain Challenge final after a thrilling finish in the Midlands A qualifying event.

Captain Kevin Ferguson teamed up with PGA professional Paul Bagshaw for the competition held at Enville Golf Club in Stourbridge.

They carded a seven under par round to total 43 points a tie at the top of the leaderboard with Nevil Bland and Roger Howarth of Staffordshire’s Brocton Hall Golf Club.

But the Nottinghamshire duo won on countback after an impressive back nine which included three successive birdies.

Now Ferguson and Bagshaw will play in the £22,000 final, in association with Golfplan, which takes place between November 6-7 at Arabella Golf Mallorca.

And it was a victory that delighted both players with Bagshaw coming to Newark just over a year ago.

“It was absolutely awesome to win this event, I’ve never been close to anything like it before,” said 57-year-old Ferguson, who works as a builder.

“I said to Paul before that I’d like to come in on four holes, and I ended up coming on six, so I contributed to the round.

“Paul was tremendous and it’s been a great day for us. Paul’s been great since he came to the club so get this win is fantastic. I’ve been to Mallorca on holiday before - never to play golf though.”

Bagshaw had been working in golf retail before returning to the day to day running at a club - and he is glad he made the change.

“This is very good for us to win here, it puts the club’s name out there and we’ll be making the most of it because we want to raise our profile,” he said.

“I’ve only been at Newark for about 14 months and I wanted to get the members involved in these sort of events. So getting to the final is a huge boost, it’s not an event I’ve ever qualified for either.

“The course was in great condition, I hadn’t played here in 20 years and people forget what a good venue Enville is.”

The host pairing of Richard Copsey and Peter Beaman missed out by a point. Copsey was aiming for his second PGA final of the year after already qualifying for the National Pro-Am Championship.