For the second time, a golfer from Alton Golf Club has won the prestigious Dupree Challenge tournament - 67 years after the club’s last triumph in it!

On August 10, Dave Barrett - who had only recently joined Alton - entered and won the event, a three-day open competition played at Rowlands Castle Golf Club, to capture a trophy which is the largest to be played for in Hampshire.

Golf lovers’ memories would have to stretch back to September 1957 for Alton Golf Club’s last victory, when Dudley Stratford won at the tender age of 20.

Dudley then moved to Blackmoor Golf Club, where he became captain in 1970 and president in 1994, only the second not to have held the title Earl of Selborne.

Alton Golf Club must wait to see how this victory will influence the golfing career of Dave, who is still young at 34.

It is fortunate that the Alton Herald compiled a full report on Dudley’s progression to his win in 1957, complete with picture, and it appears to have been a nerve tingling finish going all the way to the last hole.

Not so this time, when with an in-form short game Dave won the final 36-hole match on the 30th hole with a 7&6 victory to win the gargantuan trophy.

There is another link between the winning and hosting golf clubs - the general manager of Rowlands Castle, Paul Brown, was professional secretary of Alton in the early part of his career in the 1990s.

Jeremy Neate