RIVALS Hale and Knutsford Golf Club’s men enjoyed the inaugural overseas Ryder Cup Challenge between the two clubs.

Led by their respective professionals Richard Booth (Hale) and Tim Maxwell (Knutsford) the two teams enjoyed playing over three days in the Algarve over the courses at Palmares and Boavista.

They played four ball and singles matches on each of the three days with double points available on the last day to ensure that the leaders were not ‘home and dry’.

Hale won each of the three days to finish with a comfortable margin of 30-18.

Richard Booth said: “The event was a great success and is destined to become an annual fixture.

“Some of our players believe that Sky and the BBC are bidding for the future TV rights for the event - but this may be in their dreams.

“But the event was good fun and played over two great courses in excellent weather.”

SALE’s men played their fourth Winter Stableford and Anthony Stiles was a clear winner with 38 points from Chris Shaw 35, and Gus Keep, Paul Sadler, Kevin Moore and Tony Nabarro, all 34.

Chris Shaw went one better in their Fifth Winter qualifier posting 35 points to finish two ahead of Dale Wallace, David Platt, Mark Carr and Chris Cooper.

Davyhulme Park’s Men played their Fives competition and clear winners with 78 points were Les Jones, Nigel Whatmough, Kevin Grace and Gerard Sheehy, six points clear of Malcom Etty, Tom Lafferty, Mike Goman and the ageless Don Hamnett.

A singles Stableford at Ashton-on-Mersey saw a tie on 42 points going in favour of Ian Cooper from David Evans with bCyril Hill, Hayden Parry and Kevin Bagshaw all on 40.

The dizzy heights of Bolton Old Links saw a full Manchester Alliance field braving some very cold, windy conditions in the Team of Four competition.

Predictably it was a hardy am am team from the home club who posted the top score of 82 points.

Led in by Mike Wallace who said:” It was just a normal day for us hardy souls and my partners Dave Jones, Brian Carroll and Simon Whittaker were almost considering playing in shirt sleeves as the sun was shining.

But the Southern softies also did well with the team of Peter Barber, Paul Dalby (Didsbury), Vinny Doyle (Manchester) and Steve Barber (Stockport), taking the pro am prize with 81 points beating off the challenge from Bramall Park’s Craig Daggitt, Ken Thompson, Ed Smethurst and Seb Etchells on a cpo.

Also on 81 points were another home am am quartet of Eddie Jordan, Doug Price, Ian Fish and Steve Jackson.

The top individual pro prize was won by Didsbury’s Danny Wardrop with a fine haul of 38 points seeing him two clear of Alan Crompton (Haigh Hall) and Scott Jackson (Disley) and closing the gap on Crompton in the professional Order of Merit.