Sharon Thompson - the golf super star | North Shore Bridge Club

You may not know it, but NSBC is actually run by Sharon Thompson. Shaz allows Mark Guthrie and Mike Prescott to think they have some role in managing our club - but we all know that her official title as "Club Secretary" is just a smoke screen.

It turns out that Shaz is also a brilliant golfer. Not only is Shaz responsible for some great innovations in our financials, web design and other behind-the-scene club matters, but she has recently had some spectacular success on the golf course. Extracting details of this achievement has not been easy.

We now know that each year a match between a 12 person Golf Australia Team and a 12 person Australian Defence Force Team takes place - and that Sharon was a member of the Golf Australia Team.

The event is played over 2 days in a Ryder Cup Style format, with foursomes and four-ball matches on day one and a singles match on day two.

The team is selected as follows:
1 x leading female senior player

1 x leading local male player from each state/territory

1 x leading mid amateur male player. 1 x leading mid amateur female player

1 x Captains pick

The strong 2024 Golf Australia team was : Adam Hawkins (2024 Australian mid amateur champion), Ashleigh Arnold (2023 and 2024 Australian mid amateur champion), Sharon Thompson (NSW), David Mc Clelland (NSW), Adam Cornell (NSW), David Pretyman (TAS), Peter Bennett (WA), Steve Valentine (VIC), Peter Hargreaves (NT), Steve Deane (QLD), John Mihaljevic (ACT) and David Patyejohns (SA).

The match was played at Portsea Golf Club, on the Mornington Peninsula on 18th & 19th March. The result was a fantastic win by the Golf Australia team coming back from 7 to 5 deficit on day 1. The ADF team won the morning fourball 3.5 to 2.5. In the afternoon the ADF team recorded another narrow 3.5 to 2.5 win. The day 1 weather at Portsea was a pleasant cloudless day for golf.

So going into day 2 Golf Australia needed to take 7.5 games to win overall which was going to be tough - almost as tough as the wind which was sweeping across the course at around 30 to 40 knots. The course was an entirely different beast from day 1 but the magnificent Golf Australia team rallied to win the day 8.5 to 3.5 and thus winning the overall event 13.5 to 10.5.