It is 30 years since Justin Rose staked his claim as a golf star of the future by winning the Hampshire Hog at North Hants when just 14 years old, beating most of the country’s leading amateur golfers in the process.
But the celebration of the teenage prodigy’s meteoric rise from the county’s junior ranks to England under-18 international – after adding the English under-16 and under-18 titles in the space of a month just weeks later – has been put on hold at the Fleet club where he was a member.
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The 2025 event has been cancelled – having also been lost in 2020 and 2021 to Covid-19 – because of a major upgrade of the North Hants course.
However, that has given organisers at Blackmoor Golf Club the chance to step in and host two separate 36-hole events starting on Friday, with their traditional Selborne Salver taking place in its regular Saturday spot.
The Blackmoor Salver will be played over two rounds on Friday, and after the conclusion of the Selborne Salver 24 hours later, the player with the best 72-hole aggregate score will receive the prestigious Hampshire Salver, for the best weekend total, normally awarded after the Hog winner has been declared.
Only 14 of the past 44 winners of the Selborne Salver have gone on to claim the Hampshire Salver – but the fact that Blackmoor will host both competitions could see a clean sweep of all three trophies going to the same player.
That only happened once since the Hampshire Salver was created in 1979 when Northumberland’s Jon Metcalfe completed the hat-trick.
More crucially for some, the event will attract valuable World Amateur Golf Ranking points, and with a growing number of England squad members swerving the two Hampshire events in recent years, this weekend’s tournaments offer a good opportunity for the record 36 Hampshire players in the field of 72 golfers.
Only seven Hampshire players have won the Selborne Salver since its elevation to a national competition in 1976 – and Blackmoor’s county player Mark Burgess remains the sole winner from the host club, after his memorable victory in 2009.
Of the great names who adorn the honours board at the Whitehill club, in recent years Yorkshire’s Matt Fitzpatrick – the champion in 2012 – has gone on to be crowned US Amateur and US Open champion, as well as a Ryder Cup winner.
Gordon Brand Junior (1978) was the first Selborne winner to feature in the Ryder Cup, while the likes of Ross Fisher (2004) and Andy Sullivan (2011) have followed in his footsteps.
Past Hampshire Salver winners include European Tour winners David Gilford, Warren Bennett, Simon Dyson, Rose, Fisher, Sullivan (twice), Callum Shinkwin and Jordan Smith, as well as England’s most successful amateurs in Peter McEvoy and Gary Wolstenholme.
The R&A announced on Monday that former England and Walker Cup captain McEvoy had passed away at the age of 72.
The Warwickshire man played in the Masters twice as Amateur Champion, also qualifying for the Open as a result.
The only British amateur to have made the cut in the Masters, in 1978, McEvoy played in five Walker Cups and captained Great Britain and Ireland to back-to-back wins over the USA in 1999 and 2001.
He is the only player to have won the Selborne Salver back-to-back.
By Andrew Griffin