Families triumph in Ross-

shire club championships

By ROBIN WILSON
The run of North golf club championship fixtures has continued with memorable and history- making results at Fortrose & Rosemarkie and Tain Golf Clubs.
Fortrose and Rosemarkie were first to turn up the eye-catching men's final between former champion Alan Cameron and one of the rising stars from the recent crop of teenage members who are now challenging the adults, in this instance Cameron's 18 year old nephew, Lewis Reid.
Reid immediately made an impression by leading the eight qualifiers into the match-play rounds with scores of 74 and 70.
Then he beat greenkeeper Kevin Fowler in the semi-finals to meet up with his uncle in the final. Cameron beat the holder Michael MacDonald on the last green in his semi-final to take his place in the final.
Cameron held a one-hole lead after nine holes and when his lead increased to two with a birdie from a bunker at the 10th hole it was expected he would dominate the remaining inward holes. But a lost ball and a three-putt over the next two holes gave his young an opening and with a birdie at the 12th Reid seized the lead for the first time.
A par figure win at the 16th hole gave him a dormy two position for the drama to unfold on the penultimate hole. Both drove into the bushes from the 17th tee and took penalty drops.
Cameron holed out first for a bogey 5, leaving Reid a 15ft putt for the title which he safely made to become Fortrose & Rosemarkie's youngest club champion.
The men's handicap championship final was won by Philip Schneir-Macrae who beat Malcolm McArthur by 2 and 1. First time winner of the Fortrose & Rosemarkie women's club championship was Kay Bissett who beat Dorothy Lloyd in the final.
Meanwhile club secretary Mike MacDonald, after losing his club championship, played in the Forres 36 hole open last Saturday and won the Brodie Trophy for the first time with two sub par rounds of 67 and 65 against the par of 70.

Father and daughter win Tain club titles
Tain's club championship week of match-play ties ended with David and Sammy Vass Becoming the club's first father and daughter champions in the same year (pictured above).
David Vass ended a 30-year wait-over since his only men's championship win in 1979. Over the years he married Magi (Russell that was), helped her raise two daughters, and carved a career in the oil industry, which curtailed his own golf.
David could only watch while his wife and sisters-in-law Anne Ryan and Mary Smith gathered the championship titles until his eldest daughter, Sammy (17), won the women's championship for the first time last year.
He had appeared in one other final some years ago but lost to former Tain greenkeeper Jocky Urquhart but on reaching last Saturday's final with a comfortable 15th hole win over Steve Holmes, he then met Billy Ferries who won his way through to the final with a narrow win over his younger brother and defending champion Munro.
From the finalists' first tee shots the final went Vass's way, Billy's drive hitting the face of the fairway bunker and falling back into the sand while the Vass ball landed short of the bunker and skirted past it by a few feet.
The Vass lead increased to two after three holes but was brought brought back to level by a Ferries birdie at the 10th. With sub par golf on the 11th and 15th holes, Vass re-established his two-hole lead but a Ferries birdie 2 on the 16th kept the game alive to the final hole where Vass secured the winning half and title.
David's elder daughter Sammy (17), still in form from the previous weekend at Royal Dornoch and with the winning score in the Northern Counties girls event for the McDiarmid Trophy at Nairn Dunbar earlier in the week, she was certainly up for her defence of the women's championship in a repeat final from last year against her aunt Anne Ryan.
With little to separate them over the first eight holes, Ryan cheaply gave away two holes round the turn and found herself three behind. From this point, unlike last year's final which stretched to the final green, the teenager swept to victory with birdies on the 11th, 12th and 14th holes.
The handicap finals resulted with a wins for Russell Marshall and Lorraine Mackay and earlier in the week James Cunningham won the men's senior championship.
Sammy Vass is also the club junior champion for 2009 and Alisdair MacKintosh the junior handicap champion.

Strathpeffer's Bethune wins Dornoch Seniors.
Strathpeffer's senior member Duncan Bethune said at the presentation that as a boy growing up in Dornoch he had received his first golfing lesson from the Royal Dornoch professional Robbie Grant. Bethune won the medal in memory of Grant, who served the club as professional from 1949 to 1958, in the Royal Dornoch senior open last Saturday.
During his early membership years at Royal Dornoch, Bethune became a scratch golfer, played for the North District and was a member of the Dornoch team who won the Northern Counties Cup in 1967. He also won two club championship titles, 1970 and 1982 before then leaving for a spell in Australia and then a return to settle in Strathpeffer.
Bethune headed the Royal Dornoch seniors field of over 100 with a 74 to win by one from all-day leader local Adrain Bagott whose 75 was one better than past North District champion Bryce Milne (Elgin).
In conjunction with the scratch medal there is also a medal present to the handicap winner in memory of Duncan (Barrel) Murray, greenkeeper on the course for over 50 years . This was won by the relative new settler to Dornoch, Tony Bartlett ex Sunningdale.