Woodman aims to nail Gleneagles success

Chichester carpenter James Woodman is hoping to hammer his rivals and seal glory at Gleneagles in The Lombard Trophy final.

Woodman (pictured at back) will partner Golf at Goodwood PGA Professional Christian Fogden (front) when the duo head to Scotland to play in the showpiece event.

They are taking part in the £43,600 grand final which will be held over the PGA Centenary course at the venue for next year’s Ryder Cup on September 3-4.

And Woodman believes his own club is the perfect place to prepare for Gleneagles.

He explained: “Since the two clubs merged to form Golf at Goodwood, we have the use of two courses and they are of championship standard.

“It’s an ideal place to play golf and bringing the two together has been a good thing.

‘Everything’s under the one umbrella now and we’re getting the benefits of that. The facilities are absolutely fantastic.”

But Woodman, 32, who plays off a handicap of eight, admits Gleneagles is a mystery to him, having never visited the course before.

He said: “Being where we are in the country, it’s not somewhere we’ve had experience of, but we’re both really looking forward to playing there and it’s exciting to be representing the club in a final like this.”

The pair were the last ones to book their place in the final and Fogden is hopeful they can both put their experience at Goodwood to good use in the final.

He said: “We have a good reputation at Goodwood, we staged our own final a few years back when we staged the PGA Professional Championship.

“And there are 20 members here who are professionals which is a good sign as players like that want a course that’ll test them.

“That’s what we are expecting from Gleneagles. It’s going to be an interesting test of golf for us and hopefully we can deal with the pressure of that.”