Photo-shoot: Golf - Amateurs fly the flag

The official history of the Oxford and Cambridge Golfing Society, recently published, is subtitled "100 years of serious fun". It depends what you mean by fun. This week's tornado would have been right up their fairway. The old Oxbridge Blues have been battling the elements in the President's Putter at Rye in the first week of the New Year for more than 70 years. This year, play started on Thursday and the final takes place tomorrow.

Never cancelled in peacetime, the event sometimes has to be postponed, as the latter stages were last year, and was once moved to Littlestone in 1963. They fly in from all over the world to delight in donning two bobble hats and as many sweaters as can be worn without hindering the swing completely, and are never happier than when the flagstick attains a horizontal position.

Long gone are the days when some of the finest amateur players in the country were eligible to compete, but the former England cricket captain Ted Dexter is a past champion. "We must be mad to be out here thinking we are enjoying ourselves," he said last year, slightly letting down the side.

Part of the attraction, of course, is recovering afterwards in the Rye clubhouse, a wonderful example of the traditional type. A concession has had to be made for the only woman to have played in the Varsity Match to be allowed into the gentlemen's bar, but it has not bothered Fiona McDonald. A few years ago, as an honorary male for the week, she ended up marrying a fellow Light Blue.

Copies of these photographs - and any others by the Independent's sports photographers David Ashdown, Peter Jay and Robert Hallam - can be ordered by telephoning 0171-293 2534.