The Central West District Golf Association team has made a solid start in their first Eric Apperly Shield match for 2016 by securing a draw against Canberra-ACT on Sunday at Gold Creek Country Club.
The Eric Apperly Shield tournament pits the best young under-22 representative teams in the state against one another.
The team of Dylan Thompson, James Walford, Sam Pasquali and Kel Smith, Nick Coggan and Zach Kelly held their own against the highly fancied ACT outfit.
Thompson and Coggan recorded nice wins while Pasquali and Kelly halved their matches. Walford was pipped on the final hole of his match while Smith, the youngest in the team at just 15, put in a credible performance to go down 4&3.
Central West manager Peter Mitchell was thrilled with the result and full of praise for his team.
"The Canberra team are strong. Their combined handicaps added up to scratch where ours added up to about 20."
“It was a big effort and a credit to the boys, it was minus three degrees on the first tee, and the first green was absolutely frozen. the boys were hitting spinning shots into the green and it was just bouncing on, you could hear the ball landing on it from 150 metres away,”
"I thought they all played really well, Kel is only young but he's got six years or so ahead of him in this squad, he took it right up to a player who is off scratch.”
“Dylan was a real stand-out too, he has such good composure.”
The two squads will meet again on July 17th at Bathurst Golf Club with the winner moving onto to the quarter-finals of the tournament.
Hopefully all the boys are at their best in Bathurst in a couple of weeks,” Mitchell said.