A COUNTY Durham pensioner has provided every amateur with hope that it is never too late to enjoy club competition success.

Jim Blakey, 85, has won the seniors club competition at South Moor, Co. Durham.

And, not content with his success in the competition, Jim is already targeting a second triumph in five years’ time when he will be a nonagenarian – despite once fearing he may never walk again.

Jim, a widower, plays two or three times a week but until this season, the maximum men’s handicap was 28, so he claims to owe his victory to a change in golf’s national handicapping system.

Under England Golf rules for veterans, he signed for 41 stableford points off a handicap of 45 to win the Alan Scott Cup. Seniors can now have a handicap up to 54.

Jim said: “For around the past eight years I have been playing in competitions just for the fresh air and exercise and my crispy bacon butty in the clubhouse afterwards.

“I had no chance of winning anything until this new rule came in. Now I have a lot to play for every time and, God willing, this might put years on my life. In terms of milestones, my next target is to win a senior comp at 90.”

Jim’s best ever handicap was 23 when he was in his 50s and it was during that time when he won his first couple of club competitions. His current veteran’s handicap has been cut to 44 after this win.

He said: “My ambition is to give the lads at the club more reasons to cut my handicap further by doing well in the competitions.”

The smile on his face as he celebrated the victory said it all, having once feared for his mobility, never mind walk miles on a golf course, until the NHS intervened.

He said: “I used to be a bricklayer but I had to quit that trade after I had a badly slipped disc when I was 36. I was on traction and in so much agony I thought I would never walk again.

“I have the University Hospital of North Durham to thank for putting me right, or Dryburn as it was called then.”

Jim took up golf aged 42 and enjoyed a 20-year career in the civil service, when he went on to win two club competitions at South Moor.