UK: GOLF: British professional golfer wins trick shot 'world championship'

For most people, hitting a golf ball with any degree of accuracy can be challenging, let alone sending it 200 metres yards using an umbrella. Welcome to trick shot golf! The 2nd 'World Trick Shot Championship' at Hanbury Manor in Hertfordshire, north of London on Friday (August 18) brought together 11 of the top professionals from the USA , Canada, South Africa, Denmark, Netherlands Germany and Britain. They amazed and entertained hundreds of spectators with an array of skills and witty repartee. The golfers performed freestyle, each competitor having 15 minutes to impress the judges and the crowd. Performances were judged on the degree of difficulty, the precision and the overall entertainment value. The winner was Geoff Swain who walked away with 5,000 pounds (9,400 U.S. dollars). The 39-year-old professional golfer and former policeman scored 252 points out of a possible 300. His closest rival was Canada's Ron Lampman, who scored 243, followed by Karl Scarr of Germany on 241. Asked afterwards how he felt, Swain replied: "Shocked really. Fantastic. Really shocked. I just wanted to do a little bit better than last year and give a bit, sort of better performance and I enjoy it, you know, a bit of fun with it and I think people sort of quite like the fun side of it and a couple of different things that we put in today which worked well and you've got to sort of try and up your game a bit and yeah, loved it -- love it." A quirky story.

ITN Source | August 20, 2006

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