Bonallack and Patsy Hankins Trophies - Day 1 Report
Wednesday, 16 March
The Day 1 foursome matches, scheduled to start at 8.00 am, were delayed for nearly two hours because of fog.
Once it cleared, Team Europe started well in the Patsy Hankins Trophy, the women's Europe/Asia-Pacific match, with Parra Luque and Valenzuela winning the first two holes leading to an eventual two-hole win at the 18th. However, it would be the only point won by Europe in the morning session of five matches.
In contrast, in the equivalent men's match for the Bonallack Trophy, Team Europe attained four of the five available points. The two most decisive matches were those won by Hume and Boote against Kanya and Ishitoku (5&4) and Galiano and Cantero over Lee and Yun (4&3).
Forrest and McDonald resisted a strong comeback from Coletta and Murray to win 1 up.
In the five afternoon fourball matches, Europe's Galiano and Cantero were defeated 5&4 by Dwivedi and Foo, while their teammates secured three matches. The match of Mazzoli, the reigning European Amateur Champion, and Boote was all square on the 15th when play was suspended because of darkness. Play will resume early tomorrow morning for this and four other matches when the pairings of Parra Luque/Sobron Galmes, Fabrizio/Lyng Thomsen and Spitz/Colombotto Rosso will have the chance to turn around the overall standings in the Patsy Hankins Trophy.
Asia-Pacific holds five versus Europe’s two points.
European Patsy Hankins Trophy Captain, Elaine Ratcliffe, commented: “It was a tough day at the office; we certainly would have liked a few more points on the board ... They seemed to come out firing on all cylinders, but we will try our best and fight back tomorrow.”.
In the Bonallack Trophy, European team captain, Alexis Godillot, and his players can look back on a very successful first day, in which they earned seven points to put themselves in a comfortable position.
Asia-Pacific captain, Matt Cutler, feels his team has been struggling to cope with the schedule change from the fog delay. Although they have started slowly, they know that there are many points remaining to ensure more exciting matches over the next two days.
