Balmoral Castle Golf Course recently invited a group of charity fundraising golfers to play their prestigious course, to help raise funds for Sense Scotland and their continuing work with disabled children and adults.

Twenty eight players, made up of Sense Scotland supporters and Scottish Disability Golf players and coaches, plus their friends and family travelled from across Scotland, Germany and England to the beautiful setting of the Balmoral Estate on Friday 8 July, where they enjoyed an early traditional golfers roll and coffee, before heading out to play their first session, a 9-hole Scramble.

Played in glorious sunshine, the winning team scraped through on a count back and were, Roy Cox, Alan Wade, Paul Shepherd and Jim Gales.  Many of the teams were saddened however, when they found they came back to the clubhouse with several "Mulligan's" still in their possession!

Lunch was taken afterward, but rain and localised thunderstorms sadly made its presence felt for the first few holes of the afternoon's 18 -hole fun stableford competition.  This however soon cleared and the sun came back out.

Andy Hughes from the Sense Scotland fundraising department, said, "This was probably a once in a life time experience at the club, as only one charity per year is nominated to take up this particular session and what a great course and setting.  How could we beat it?  Playing golf on a smashing course, a warm day, great company and looking around to see the Castle as a back-drop, the Scottish Mountains, massive amounts of wildlife.  Superb".

A special "Team Ball" was issued to each group, with a prize for the best stableford returned score with that ball and, although only two teams managed to hold onto the ball for a score, this was won by the St Andrews Golf Groups team from Fife.

The two best individual stableford scores returned by all players were by, Ian Alexander with 39 points and Nick McBride with 38 points.  The winners won St Andrews Golf Putters sponsored for this event by Janet Gales.

The overall winning teams were as follows:

Winners were team 2, with Steve and Mark Cook, Steven McNab and Adam Carnell with 134 points.

2nd place team was team 7 with Andy Arnott, Alan Wade, Roy Cox and John Kane with 126 points.

3rd place was team 5, David Kinloch, Alan Baker, Stewart Alexander and Iain Tannahill with 124 points.

Some fantastic items were donated to the charity and used as prizes and auction items.  Sponsors for the day were Duff House Royal, Cowglen, Strathmore, Glenvervie, Dumbarton, Alloa (Schawpark) and Muckhart Golf Clubs.  The auction, donations and entry fees have managed to generate an income of approximately ?2,600 for Sense Scotland.

Jim Gales the Chairman of the SDGP said, "Garry, the Events Manager at Balmoral, and all the green-keeping and catering staff, made us very welcome on our arrival and provided some fantastic hospitality, so we must pass on our thanks and best wishes to them for all of their efforts.  The organisation of the event was a joint effort between Sense Scotland and Scottish Disability Golf and many thanks must go to the people in the background, like Stevie Cunningham, the SDGP Vice Chair and Steve Bramwell the SDGP Secretary, for operating the scoring system and Andy Hughes and Roy Cox of Sense Scotland who did Stirling work for the running of the auction and players.