Battle for top spot

9:32am Saturday 19th May 2007

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THE Wiltshire golfing spotlight falls on Ogbourne Downs tomorrow when the county's leading players converge on the 100-year-old club for the last two rounds of the 72-hole Wiltshire Amateur Championship, writes Ernie Newell.

Fifty-four players set out on the championship trail at West Wilts this morning.

The leading 33 players after the first 36 holes at the hilltop Warminster club will qualify for the final 36 holes at Ogbourne.

And a new champion will be installed tomorrow.

Mark Searle, a former South Western Counties champion from High Post, who won the title for the second time at North Wilts and Cumberwell Park last spring, left the amateur ranks earlier this year to have a crack at the professional tournament scene.

Searle, 24, won the first of his two titles at Cumberwell Park in 2003, nine years after his father, that legendary High Post golfing character Roger Searle, picked up the last of his nine championships at Tidworth.

Miles Mackman, the South Western Counties colts' champion and England under 21 squad memeber from Broome Manor, was runner-up to Searle in both 2003 and 2006 and is the obvious favourite to succeed his former county teammate.

The championship was last played at Ogbourne Downs in 1996 - the year after the members changed the club's name from Swindon Golf Club - when Alan Mutch, of South Wilts, won the title by a shot from ex-county captain Jeremy Tomlinson (Marlborough).

Tomlinson has been trying to win the championship for some 20 years. A runner-up four times and often in the frame, he came under starter's orders again this morning and must command respect.

Other leading contenders include Ben Loughrey, Richard Scarrott and county captain Jonathan James (Wrag Barn), Matt Swales and Alistair James (Cumberwell Park), Sam Elkins and John Haugh (South Wilts), Simon Matton (Bowood), Jack Hiscock (Marlborough) and the Ogbourne pair of Wiltshire boys' captain James Bethwaite and 2005 county champion Ben Newman.

Newman was the first Ogbourne player to win the title since ex-county captain Brian McCallum back in 1982 and, at 16 years nine months, two months younger than the previous youngest champion, Swindon Ryder Cup star David Howell.

The only other former champion in the field is Howell's new caddie, Nick Mumford.

Mumford, who won the title over his own West Wilts course in 1995, is playing in the championship because his guv'nor had to pull out of this week's Macau Open with the back injury which has wrecked his last two tournaments on the US Tour.

Other players capable of making their presence felt are the Broome Manor trio of Paul Sandry, Kevin Phillips and Tom Ruddle.

The leading 16 players in the county championship will qualify for the Wiltshire Matchplay Championship at The Manor House club, Castle Combe, on September 29 and 30.

The 36-hole Wiltshire Colts' Strokeplay Championship will be played alongside today's first two rounds at West Wilts.

Sam Matton won last year's championship by edging Jack Hiscock by a single stroke at North Wilts.