The Formby & Freshfield Golf Society will be celebrating its official 11th year anniversary in 2010 i.e. when the Society was registered with the EGU. However the Society has been in action for more than 15 years, as you can see below.

When the Bay Horse pub was a real pub and not a crappy eatery, a group of us met up every Tuesday to discuss football, women and golf - sad I know!!! Those people were myself, Mike Kirkland, Peter Curran, Frank McGlynn, Keith Court and Ralph Coyne. We had met up back in 1993-4 through Our Ladys PTA. Keith was a keen golfer and the rest of us were total amateurs ( still are!!). After a few pints and we had finished talking about football and woman, our thoughts turned to golf and how we would go to Portugal one day to play. This went on for months.

End of 1995, we decided to start playing regularly and in fact our first golf match together was at Royal & Ancient Kirkby, where Mike Kirkland, and I kid you not, turned up in trainees, jeans and a singlet!!!! In early 1996 we decided to go away for a golf break to Bryn Morfydd. This was a great success and we decided to go again the following year. We always talked about becoming a society, playing every month, going abroad, etc.... but nothing was ever done - it was just talk.

Finally, in 1999, we arrived at Gloucester Jarvis hotel for a weekend of golf. Numbers had swelled over the years and it was now about 16 - 20 players. We had such a great time that I finally decided to do something about it and the Formby & Freshfield Golf Society was born and had its official first monthly competition, as a member of the EGU in August 1999, hence the inaugural cup, which Evan Bale duly collected that first official competition.

Our first "official" society weekend away was in May 2000 at Crail Golfing Society in Scotland, where the Society Championship was born. We have not looked back since. Of the original group, back in the Bay Horse, I believe there is only myself and Mike Kirkland remaining in the society, although Frank McGlynn has recently come back into the fold.

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Famous Golf Sayings

I'll always remember the day I broke ninety. I had a few beers in the clubhouse and was so excited I forgot to play the back nine - Bruce Lansky

They say golf is like life, but don't believe them. It's more complicated than that - Gardner Dickinson

I'm hitting the woods just great, but I'm having a terrible time getting out of them - Harry Tofcano

Golf! You hit down to make the ball go up. You swing left and the ball goes right. The lowest score wins. And on top of that, the winner buys the drinks - Anon

I play in the low 80s. If it's any hotter than that, I won't play - Anon

Putts get real difficult the day they hand out the money - Lee Trevino

The best wood in most amateurs' bags is the pencil - Unknown

 I'd like to see the fairways more narrow. Then everybody would have to play from the rough, not just me - Seve Ballesteros

If you think it's hard to meet new people, try picking up the wrong golf ball - Jack Lemmon

Golf is a game whose aim is to hit a very small ball into a even smaller hole, with weapons singularly ill-designed for the purpose - Winston Churchill

Golf is like chasing a quinine pill around a cow pasture: Winston Churchill

It took me seventeen years to get 3,000 hits in baseball. I did it in one afternoon on the golf course: Babe Ruth

Columbus went around the world in 1492. That isn't a lot of strokes when you consider the course: Lee Trevino

If you're caught on a golf course during a storm and are afraid of lightning, hold up a 1-iron. Not even God can hit a 1-iron: Lee Trevino

The people who gave us golf and called it a game are the same people who gave us bag pipes and called it music: Anon

I would like to deny all allegations by Bob Hope that during my last game of golf, I hit an eagle, a birdie, an elk and a moose: Gerald Ford

After all these years, it's still embarrassing for me to play on the American golf tour. Like the time I asked my caddie for a sand wedge and he came back ten minutes later with a ham on rye: Chi Chi Rodriguez