West Cliffs beat every man in the field on Wednesday and the Hozel Rockets took three and a half points out of four on it. By dinner the Sagres Swingers were five behind with three sessions left.
Sea fog came off the Atlantic in the middle of the morning and never properly lifted. West Cliffs is the second best golf course in Portugal and nineteenth in continental Europe, and on Wednesday it treated eight visiting Englishmen exactly as its ranking suggests it should.
The field average was 108.9. That is nine shots higher than any other round played all week, and every man in the tournament bar one posted his worst or near-worst score of the trip on it.
Jack Church went round in 91. Nobody else broke 100.
Behind them: Alexei Stretton 106, Guy Mitchell 113, Tom Cartwright 117, Harris Allan 118, Gus Beswick 119. It is the single most punishing card in the archive and it produced, by some distance, the most one-sided session of the cup.
Four singles matches, stableford scoring, four points on the table.
Cartwright's four and three over Mitchell is the most emphatic result of the week and the first half of a head-to-head he would complete on the Friday. Wilkinson beat Stretton three and two. Church closed out the Sagres captain with a hole to spare, which he would do again on the Saturday.
The only point the Sagres Swingers took out of the day came from Beswick, who shot 119 — the worst score of the week by any player on any course — and halved his match.
That is the handicap system working precisely as designed, and it is the first hard evidence of the thing that would define his tournament: Gus Beswick, off 29.4, does not lose singles matches. He did not lose one all week.
The Rockets went into Wednesday 3–1 up after a shared four-ball at Praia d'El Rey and a two-nil sweep of the low ball at Dolce Campo Real. They came out of it 6½–1½.
Ten points won the cup. Eight sessions' worth of golf had produced a five-point lead with three sessions and ten points left, and James Leigh's side needed to win two-thirds of everything remaining simply to draw.
They took the scramble at Bom Sucesso the following day, halved the Friday singles at Royal Óbidos, and were beaten 3–1 back at West Cliffs on the Saturday. The final margin was five.
The cup was not mathematically decided on Wednesday evening. It was decided on Wednesday evening.
The field went back to West Cliffs on the Saturday, which tells you what they made of it. Everybody scored better second time round. Nobody enjoyed it more.