Golf: Garry Taylor buoyed by Easingwold golden memories (From Gazette & Herald)

Golf: Garry Taylor buoyed by Easingwold golden memories

10:41am Saturday 9th March 2013 in Sport By Tony Kelly, Deputy sports editor

Coincidence drove home a highly-charged emotional memory for Heworth Golf Club player Garry Taylor in the York Union of Golf Clubs’ Cross Trophy competition.

Taylor and fellow Heworth GC player Jim Batt, one of York Union’s leading golfers, won the 11th round of the Cross Trophy competition staged at Easingwold GC.

The duo posted a superb 12-under-par total to win by one stroke, with Batt’s glorious eagle on the final hole ultimately sealing the triumph.

But for Taylor, who had only been drafted in at the last minute as a stand-in for Batt’s usual partner who was injured, the success was graced by an added dimension of poignance.

Taylor recalled that his first ever Cross Trophy triumph was some 20 years earlier in tandem with his long-time friend Bernard Mennell, another Heworth GC mainstay.

The Taylor-Mennell axis had similarly won a Cross Trophy round at Easingwold GC, so to clinch victory again two decades later at the same venue was a special moment for Taylor, especially given how his best pal Mennell had died last year from a brain tumour.

Said semi-retired Taylor: “When Jim eagled the final hole I thought of Bernie and I said to Jim that Bernie had probably been watching over us with that shot.

“Then the instant I found out we’d won at the presentation do later on I just thought how fitting that the victory had come again at the same course where Bernie and I had won 20 years earlier.

“When you think that I would not have been playing had it not been for Jim’s regular partner being injured, then it was quite a coincidence to win the event where we did.

“It was a very poignant moment for me and we raised a toast to Bernie, who sadly died last year at the age of 54.”