BRENDAN Booth's victory in the final match helped Colchester Golf Club progress in the Thornton Cup.

Booth used all of his years of experience in county competitions to win 5&4 and help Colchester beat Burstead 8-7 overall, in the county's premier team matchplay competition.

On a tight, quirky course with a layout totally different to Colchester, it was always going to be a tight match in perfect weather conditions.

After the morning’s foursomes, the scores were level at 2½-2½ on matches.

And although the afternoon matches threw up some good wins for both sides, they failed to produce a clear leader.

As Colchester's lead off man, Alan Sharrocks halved his match before Cai James gave them an early lead with a 5&4 win, followed by Dan Eke who had another 5&4 victory.

These victories were soon negated as Burstead fought back with wins over Richard Withnall and Steve Wynne.

Jason Nicolls had a good 2&1 victory along with Lewis Barber.

But with James Angel and Roger Wright losing out the scores on paper at least were level, before Booth fittingly sealed victory in the last match out on the course.

Andrew Leonard-Jones (14) and Graham Parker (19) claimed victory in the Curtis Cup.

Parker returned a plus nine score to help the pair win a trophy first presented in 1933.

Their score was two holes better than runners-up Mike Sutton (nine) and David Latta (15), who returned plus seven.

Alan Irvine (11) and Guy Lennox (8) finished third on countback from Ben and Joe Williams (5s).

Both pairings returned plus six, with Irvine and Lennox being plus five on the back nine against the Williams’ plus two.

Twenty-four pairs of ladies competed for Colchester GC's Mackenzie Foursomes qualifier, with the top eight pairings going into a knockout.

Gill Crayston and Judith Robertson crept ahead of Catherine Chick and Cherie Clark to top this qualifier, after both returning nett 78s.

In third place were Cathy Burchell and Mandy Rix, who returned just half a shot less at 78.5.

Maureen Devenish and Linda Freeman finished fourth on 84.

The other qualifiers were Philippa Deman and Heather Dennis, Pat Kettle and Jo Mager, Nerys Horrocks and Marilyn Wood and Joan Cotterill and Sarah Turner.