Braidwood lose Canberra Shield by one shot

Held at the Royal Military College (RMC), the Canberra Cup is a competition which pits eight teams against one another in matchplay.

As one of the smaller clubs to enter the competition, Braidwood struggled to get eight women together to form a team.

Subsequently, neither they, nor anybody else, could have predicted that they would come within a hair’s breadth of taking away a tournament victory, only to be pipped by Yowani at the finish line. 

“I wouldn’t say I was confident, because we were up against seven other big clubs,” team captain Michelle Henry said. 

“Bowral, Yowani, Gungahlin Lakes, Queanbeyan, Belconnen, Federal Golf Club … they’re all big clubs compared to us. 

“Getting eight ladies to play in itself is a bit of a task.” 

It was a task that proved well worth the effort for Braidwood. The team quickly hit its stride in the competition, and Henry said that it was around the fourth match victory that she began to realise that victory was a distinct possibility. 

“When we were four up, I thought ‘four wins is pretty good out of eight, we’ll see how we keep going’,” she said. 

“When we had the six wins, I thought ‘yep, this could work for us’. I really wasn’t expecting anybody to have seven results, put it that way.” 

In the end, Yowani finished with 13 points and Braidwood with 12, largely thanks to the fact that the former had seven wins and a draw, compared to Braidwood’s seven wins and a loss. 

Despite the result, Henry said that “all of us were really quite excited by [the near win].” 

“One of the ladies was saying ‘gee we won a lot of holes, if it’d gone to countback it must have been close’.” 

Although Yowani would have won comfortably on countback, according to Henry, what pleased her the most was the realisation from her team that they could compete with the bigger clubs.

“I’m very proud of them and very pleased with how they all came together,” Henry said.