Spike makes his mark for golfing trip of a lifeime
(Credit: Reuters)

The Tulletts team of Spike Jones, Tim Burroughs, Rob Stephens and Kerry O'Brien fired the golf rounds of their lives to win the Australian leg of the Reuters Global Golf Challenge and earn an all-expenses trip to Spain for two of the four.

Jones, who captained the team, was so delighted he is paying for the other two team members - and their wives - to join them.

The Tulletts director and his four-man team fired an extraordinary 12 under par off the stick which combined with their Ambrose handicap of 8 ¼ gave them a net score of 50 ¾ points over the testing par-71 Pennant Hills course in Sydney.

Twenty-three handicapper Jones, a long-time director of wholesale brokers Tulletts, now has one headache - who to pick to partner him for the Reuters Global Golf Challenge finals in late October.

"We're all coming but I don't know yet who I'll play with," he said. "I reckon it'll be daggers at dawn!"

The ASX-Reuters Financial Markets Charity Golf Tournament is one of the biggest charity golf days in the Southern Hemisphere.

Their 20 ¼ under-par total left a 276-strong field in their wake with a team from the Sydney Futures Exchange being narrowly beaten into second place by a quarter of a point in the Ambrose (Scramble format) event.

"I've been playing in the event for 19 years so I guess it's about time I won something but we're simply ecstatic to get such a fantastic prize," said Jones.

"I've never been to Spain so I reckon we'll take about 10 days and go touring around the finals. But it's mind-blowing what's happened - I have to keep pinching myself to make me believe it's really happened."

Jones and his partner will take their place in a field representing countries from around the world in the third Reuters Global Golf Challenge finals over 36 holes at the breathtaking San Roque club in October.

The Spanish coastal club, one of the best in Europe, is a short distance from Valderrama where the European Tour's climax, the Volvo Masters, is contested.

The finalists will rub shoulders with some of the top pros at a gala dinner and be special guests of the club to watch some of the tournament action after they have contested their own event.

Jones and his team, of course, are already big winners and so are some 16 children and medical research charities following the Reuters-Australian Stock Exchange charity day at Pennant Hills on Friday (February 18) after an amazing A$700,000 (£280,000) was raised.

This came through corporate sponsorship, individual donations and a gala dinner auction for the biggest charity golf event of its kind in the entire Asian Pacific region.

The event, which annually stirs up huge interest among the entire Sydney financial community, is now in its 19th year.

Co-organiser David Brocklehurst, a former local MD for Reuters Australia and NZ, summed up: "It's a day that the whole financial markets here get involved in and look forward to. We had a lovely sunny day in the 28-degree heat and raised a good sum of money for so many worthwhile charities."

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