comeback in the history of the competition.

Cootamundra golfers surged into the final of the 2009/10 Scott Fuller Shield with another dominant performance at Young on Sunday.

However, it could have easily been so different.

When the first of three preliminary rounds of the shield was played in Temora late last year, only nine local pairs were willing to make the trip, easily the poorest Coota attendance in the history of the

competition.

With the top 10 scores from each town contributing to a rolling aggregate, Coota was always going to be behind the eight ball.

At the end of day one Coota found themselves

trailing Temora by a massive 65 points, a total that,

for all intents and purposes, should have been

insurmountable.

However, there’s nothing Coota golfers love more than a Scott Fuller challenge and when the second round was held on their own track, Coota players flooded the course and tore a huge chunk out of the deficit.

With Coota’s top 10 pairings that day accumulating 469 points and Temora only able to respond with 427, the difference heading into the Young round had been trimmed back to 23 points.

It was still going to be a tough ask, but when Coota went into battle on the weekend with no less than 29 pairs, the chances of a miracle comeback were high.

Faced with the undulating nature of the Young

fairways and the often difficult to read sloping greens, the top 10 Coota teams averaged 45.1 points on Sunday while the Temora boys struggled to a team total of 408 meaning Coota was successful by an even 20 points.

The simple mathematics is that Coota’s pulled back an incredible 85 points on their rivals over the final two rounds of play, setting up another salivating final against arch-enemies Tumut.

Phil Gay and Anthony Dean, who have spent plenty of time together repairing fences on properties affected by last year’s fires, strung together a brilliant round of 50 points to be Coota’s best on the day.