Huntercombe 2025
A very enjoyable match with Huntercombe GC who were excellent hosts and allowed us to secure our 1st victory of the season.
New Members
The Committee has approved the following Gentlemen for membership of HACGS:
Peter Womersley (Proposer: Christopher Rothery)
Matthew Whittaker (Proposer: David Howells)
Paul Roberts (Proposer: Simon Duvivier)
We hope they have a most enjoyable golfing experience with us.
Summer Meeting - NZGC - 1 July
Our Summer Meeting is at New Zealand Golf Club on Tuesday 1st July. We currently have 22 Members booked with about 6 places currently open. The booking link is: https://forms.gle/pHXZc4R3Moio4BUUA
Littlestone G.C. 2025
As ever, a very enjoyable match against Littlestone GC, who were excellent hosts. Thanks to Michael W who kindly stood in as Match Manager for Jamie W who was “hors de combat” on this occasion.
Littlehampton GC
Yest another wonderful fixture with our friends at Littlehampton Golf Club - our 102th in fact. Great course, marvellous people, perfect weather …. enough to render the result almost irrelevant. (the actual results can be found here: https://www.hacgolfingsociety.com/teams)
20th Anniversary Match vs. RWNGC
Thank you to Miles Connell for this montage of our 20th Anniversary Match against Royal West Norfolk Golf Club. Appropriately the match was halved.
Standard Cover
For a while the HACGS Standard has been transported to and from matches in an orange Sainsburys plastic bag. Thanks to the generosity of Mike Medley we now have a slightly more appropriate container for it.
Spring Meeting 2025
Glorious weather greeted us on Worplesdon for our Spring Meeting on 9 April. A record turnout of 32 Members and 2 guests were warmly welcomed too. Duncan Reed won the Taffy Grenade during the morning session. A few stalwarts made it through the excellent lunch to take on the course during the afternoon - a session that was apparently won by the President.
Norfolk Tour 2025 - Hunstanton
Huge thanks to the generous hospitality shown by Members of Hunstanton Golf Club for our 54 hole match in April 2025. The match was played in a very friendly yet competitive manner in glorious sunshine with a wonderfully bright blue sky. Sadly not a win this time. Huge appreciation to Charles Buckley for his excellent organisation of this tour.
Norfolk Tour 2025 - Royal West Norfolk
This was our 20th official match against the Members of Royal West Norfolk Golf Club at Brancaster - what a treat it was. A really enjoyable course, complimented by excellent playing company, which was made all the more significant with an appropriate “half” for this 20th wonderful annual event. Many thanks to Miles Connell for having run this fixture for so many years.
HACGS WhatsApp Group
An HACGS WhatsApp group is available for all Members to use. Its purpose is to facilitate the arrangement of ad-hoc rounds of golf (in addition to our wonderful fixture list) and to coordinate some social activities such as lunches in Armoury House. You can join by clicking the following link in your mobile phone: https://chat.whatsapp.com/JKlJDQb4wVv7n9kr3neYjD
HAC GS tour to Scotland to play against “the Fife Fusiliers”
A select band of members, including five former Captains of the Society, comprising : Charlie Buckley, Andrew Cadell, Mike Cornell, Gerry Diebel, Richard Pettit, Michael Phillipps, Richard Stubbs and Michael Webster travelled to Scotland in June 2024 to play against our long-standing opponents who in the spirit of friendly competition, with minimal military justification, dub themselves : “The Fife Fusiliers”. This was a fixture originating on the initiative of former HACGS member, Ian Gray, and represented the seventh visit of its type, the first one taking place in 2011.
Emulating the previous President, John Burns’ centenary tour in 2022, we stayed in a St. Andrews University Hall of Residence and one our first full day in Fife played an acclimatising game on the Balcomie Links at Craill (founded in 1786) which was won by Cadell and Diebel with a better ball score of 41, with Phillipps and Stubbs as runners-up with 38 points, the other two pairs sharing 37 points apiece.
On our second day of golf we played against the Fife Fusiliers on their course at Elie (founded in 1875) which was won by our hosts : 3-1, Buckley & Cadell being the winning pair for the HACGS. Our final day of golf involved playing foursomes on the Jubilee Course at St. Andrews, with lunch afterwards in the Members Dining Room in the main clubhouse. This resulted in a 3-1 victory for the HAC team: Webster & Cornell, Pettit & Diebel and Buckley & Stubbs being the winning pairs. Since he won both his matches, Charlie Buckley was declared the indubitable Victor Ludorum of the tour.
All games of golf were played in winds ranging from Force 3 to gusting Force 6 but mercifully there was negligible rain. One of our members at Craill twice lost his push trolley in the wind! The author as organiser wrote to his counterpart, Ian Forgie, after the tour was completed saying: “The welcome we experienced was as if from long-standing friends. Even though a number had not met each other before, it just shows that the game of golf is a great unifier”. It is the intention of both societies to resume their encounters in 2026.
Michael Webster
HAC GS tour to Scotland to play against “the Fife Fusiliers”