A welcome from our Seniors Captain

Seniors Captain Welcome Message 2026

As the Seniors Captain for 2026, I would like to welcome all members of the BFGC Senior Men’s section. I have really enjoyed being part of the Seniors gang for the past 3 or 4 years and will be doing my best to ensure we all enjoy our Seniors Golf this year.

Please do put your names down for Senior Competitions held on Thursdays. Times can be booked in advance on BRS, and competition entries are made on the day via HowDidIDo. Please check the Seniors website regularly for details, and please do take care completing your scorecards.

Please also feel free to put your names down for the Seniors Inter-Club Matches via the Seniors website. These will be held mostly, not all, on Mondays in 2026. Away matches are often more popular, so please try to volunteer for some Home matches too. Some prefer to aim for pairs of Home and Away matches against the same club. When matches are oversubscribed, I will try to be as fair as possible with team selection. It’s not about picking the “best” players every time – we can’t all be Ryder Cup standard! Everyone who wants to play in these matches will get the chance to do so, regardless of their handicap. Experience suggests that a high and low handicap combination often works well in Fourball Betterball matchplay, and there will be ample opportunity to play with friends old and new. I could suggest that these matches are about having a good time rather than winning or losing, but sometimes it’s nice to win too! 😊.

My Seniors Captain’s away day is planned for Monday, 13th July 2026 at Radcliffe on Trent Golf Club. It will be an exchange visit, so relatively cheap, and not too far to travel. I am sure some of you will have played there before, and I hope to see many of you there in July.

I look forward to meeting and playing with as many of you as possible during 2026 and wish you all a happy and successful golfing year.

Phil Harrison
Senior Men’s Captain,
Beeston Fields Golf Club, 2026

Seniors Captain Acceptance Speech, November 2025

Gentlemen,

I’m still not quite sure how I got here, but my name is Phil Harrison, and somehow, I find myself speaking to you as Seniors Captain at Beeston Fields Golf Club.

I first wandered along to a Seniors comp about three and a half years ago, and I was greeted at the time by a member of the committee who also happens to be a former work colleague. He welcomed me with the comment “It’s good to see you are now an old git, Phil!”. I remember thinking I’m not too sure about that – I thought “Am I really now an old git?”. My next thought was “Do I want to be an old git?” and then “If everyone else thinks I’m an old git, it doesn’t really matter what I think anyway!”.

Over time, I guess I have got used to the idea, and of course I have had had the pleasure of playing with lots of other old gits too. I haven’t played with everyone here today, but it must be 70-80%, and the reason I am standing here today is that I have enjoyed playing with all of you Senior Golfers.

I have enjoyed the weekly Thursday competitions and would like to thank Alisdair for all the hard work he puts into organising these. Please do continue to put your names down – the more the merrier as far as prizes are concerned. It’s good to have some extra singles qualifiers during the summer, as well as some interesting team competitions. I remember from my first comp, when we all had to tear off that bottom section of the card, I was told “Be careful with your scorecard because Alisdair likes disqualifying people!”. If that sounds a bit harsh, maybe a better way to put it is that Alisdair reviews the cards with due care and attention….

I have also very much enjoyed the inter-club matches. When I first started playing golf, we never played match-play at all. I wasn’t a club member back then, and it was always Strokeplay on Municipal courses near Birmingham. We spent ages trying to get under 100! One of the first times I came across fourball Betterball match play being played properly was at a little competition at the Belfy in Sutton Coldfield in 1989… I was particularly impressed by one pair of players, both at the top of their game, hitting some great shots. I didn’t know much about tactics, but I don’t remember anything like one laying up safely first so the other could go for it. As I recall they both just went for everything!

It wasn’t just their golfing skill that was impressive, it was the way they were clearly enjoying the whole thing. I think there was about a 10-year age gap between them, so maybe a bit of the older one advising the younger one, but they were just laughing and joking the whole time. They’d be chatting away, in their own language (they weren’t English), then they’d cross a bridge and give each other a pretend shove. At one point they were even almost wrestling, trying to shove the other guy into the edge of one of the lakes at the Belfry so he got his feet wet. They looked for all the world like two mates wandering home from the pub after a few beers! Then they’d get to the green and the fierce concentration would snap back in, before making the perfect chip or putt.

As some of you might have guessed, the little competition I’m talking about, at the Belfy in 1989, was the Ryder Cup. The two mates enjoying and winning their better ball match play golf, were Severiano Ballesteros and Jose-Maria Olazabal.

So what’s that got to do with us? Well…when I’m picking teams for Seniors matches next year, its simple really. All I am looking for is pairs of Beeston Fields Seniors who can play with the same friendly team spirt…, that same fierce competitiveness…, and of course the same golfing ability, as Ballesteros and Olazabal showed in the Ryder Cup!. So, to help me with team selection, please can I ask everyone who fits that description, could you all put your hands up now? …..

In the real world we don’t all play like those guys. Or maybe we do, just for one or two shots a round? You hit one shot that you know was as good as anyone could have done, and you strut around for maybe 30 seconds like you’re an expert before you duff the next shot and get back to reality. Seriously, everyone is welcome to put their names down for inter-club matches, and that means Home as well as Away. A high and low handicap combination often works well in those matches and it’s an opportunity to meet new people from here, as well as new people from the other clubs.

My Seniors Captains Away Day will be at Radcliffe on Trent on 13th July next year. It will be an exchange visit, so nice and cheap and not too far to travel. I am sure some of you will have played there before and I hope to see many of you there next summer.

As seniors captain, I’m not here to make any drastic changes to anything. But when I do get involved in any discussions or decisions with the committee, there are a couple of things that I will bear in mind. The first is that I do think seniors golf is for all of us, regardless of age or ability. It’s not just about the “best” golfers. The handicap system allows us all to compete, and hopefully to have a similar chance of winning occasionally. My second point is that when we have golf-related issues, we need to keep them in perspective and remember to relax and enjoy our golf. We can all fall into the trap of getting annoyed or even angry over little things like slow play, or someone else’s handicap, or the state of some part of the course. Yes, it’s ok to raise questions about these things, but its not worth getting angry. We all of us without exception have more serious things going on in our lives. So, Seniors Golf is for all of us; remember to relax and enjoy it.

As a final comment about the Seniors Captain’s role, I do think communication should be a part of it. I will do my best to know what’s going on regarding Comps and Matches, and to know where information can be found on our website, or BRS, HowDidIdo, England Golf. Please feel free to contact me, or if you see me here in the bar after a round of golf, I am always open to a chat about seniors golf or football…not necessarily in that order.

So to finish, Gentlemen, I would like to say that I am proud to be an old boy or an old git here at Beeston Fields. I intend to enjoy my year as Seniors Captain, and I hope you will all enjoy next year too.

Thank You.

Phil Harrison
Senior Men’s Captain,

Message from John Simpson