Raymond Repeats As
Brabazon Champion
SURREY, ENGLAND | For Neil
Raymond, last week at Walton
Heath was virtually identical
to the equivalent week of a
year ago. On each occasion,
he had a telephone call over
the weekend to say that he
was a reserve for the European Team championships;
and on each occasion he went
straight out and showed the
selectors a thing or two by
winning the Brabazon Trophy.
Yesterday, after he had
become the first player in
20 years to win this prestigious event twice in row, the
26-year-old Raymond said
that he had given himself
the same little speech about
needing to go out there to
prove a point.
A late developer in that he
was still playing to a handicap of five at the age of 18,
Raymond started yesterday’s
fourth round with a two-shot
lead over Ireland’s Kevin
Phelan and had a closing 72 to
win by two.
“I didn’t,” he said, “play
as well as I had done in the
earlier rounds but I made a
couple of important saves and
stayed in the present.”
The best of the saves came
at the short seventh where he
took a club too many and hit
into the trees. With nowhere in
the immediate vicinity to take
a drop, he went back some 80
yards, from where he had a
blind shot over the woods. To
the astonishment of the little
crowd and, you would imagine,
to Whelan’s, he all but holed
out and made off with the most
improbable of bogeys.
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