January/February 2024 report
12 OWs joined nearly 800 others at a black-tie dinner at the
Grosvenor House Hotel in Park Lane to celebrate 100 years since the Halford Hewitt was first played. All 64 ‘Hewitt schools’ were represented, plus several guests, some of them representing the various courses on which the Hewitt has been played over the years.
The dinner was preceded by the draw for the 2024 competition, to be played on 11th-14th April. Whitgift were drawn to play Shrewsbury, in the first round.
l tor: Dudley Thompson, Oscar Bailey, Carl Robertson-Hills; Tom Bloxsome; Martin Hayes
l to r: Jeremy Stanyard, Nic Gates, Chris Blundell, Stuart Hollins, Richard Gibson, Matt Webster
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The society’s 2024 fixture list has been published on this website. Please see under ‘Fixtures’ in the menu bar. The first formal event will be the AGM and dinner on Thursday 21st March, at Tandridge Golf Club. For the first time, it will be possible to play golf before the evening events; please see under Fixtures for more details. After that, the first formal competition of the year will be the Thompson Tankards, a foursomes event at Prince’s in April. This is our only society foursomes event of the year, and comes at the start of Hewitt Week (see above).
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From time to time, we hear of great things from Whitgiftian golfers playing in competitive golf outside the UK. Members may be aware that there have been a number of golfers who have left school and gone to the US on golf scholarships. One such is Riccardo Fantinelli (left), who has some astonishing accomplishments against his name; readers may recall his finishing runner-up in the British Boys Championship at Deal a couple of years ago.
Riccardo is now at Princeton, where he led the university’s golf team to victory in the 2023 Ivy League team event, and won the individual championship, with a score of 5 under par. He has also represented Italy in the 2023 World Amateur Team Championship at Abu Dhabi GC; the team finished fifth, one of their best three ever finishes in the event.
