Golf 2019 – The Truants Foundation

Someone is smiling on us!

The Truants dodge the rain on their 8^th Annual Golf day & raise their biggest total yet!

It may have been a little damp underfoot but that did not deter The Truants from doing what they do best – taking over the magnificent courses at Royal Mid-Surrey GC for fun in four-balls (35 of them) and raising over £55,000 for their three great (& grateful) charities; Nordoff Robbins, Childline & Teenage Cancer Trust.

A whirlwind in shorts & long, rugby socks Michael Hole led the day which featured more food and drink than is thinkable at similar events and provided the bumper crop of participants (including many new faces to replace the army of rugby fans who were otherwise engaged on the other side of the world) with a golfing challenge and an array of prizes for endeavour, for the raffle and in a, frankly, spectacular auction!

With Iron Maiden’s Trooper Beer once again involved and an upgraded Trooper Tent Bar providing hot sausage rolls for the very first time nobody could complain of not being fortified and with friends of the event, Callaway, providing prizes and sleeves of golf balls for the errant to litter the course with it was no surprise that the scoring on VPAR was impressive and, well, bandit-like! The Roll of Honour is below. It should be noted that our ingenious approach to ‘pay for a mulligan ‘ strategy under the opportunistic eye of Helen Curl yielded a stunning £2,300 towards the nights total (& probably explains some of the high scores below!!).

Over 140 players joined us upstairs for the Dinner & Presentation Evening which saw MC Dave Shack keep the proceedings flowing and introduce returning comedian, impressionist Aaron Jones for his hilarious take on things and, in truth, an unforgettable ad-lib performance during the raffle that had people literally doubling up and crying with laughter! You had to be there…

Shack also had the pleasure to welcome long-time friend of the Truants and well known damager of livers, Rob Henderson to the proceedings. The former British & Irish Lion stepped up to replace auctioneer Tom Baigrie and produced a performance worthy of a place in the English XV over in Japan!! He certainly knew how to get the money out of the room and a large part of the success of the event was his ability to insert himself into events and obtain multiple listings when the £££ bids got serious!

The night, as usual, finished around the piano in the downstairs bar with voices hoarse as Paul ‘fingers’ Curran rolled out the now infamous Truants’ Songbook and pints turned into nightcaps by 3.30 am and the rain decided it had had enough.

It had been a phenomenally successful day (& night) for the charities and we’ll do it all again next year…

Top 3 Teams (& scores)