THE RAYMOND FERNIE inaugural golf trophy was held over 3 rounds at Le Golf Nacional Ryder Cup Championship course in Paris in May 2019. The tour was sponsored by Big Dog Golf and 26 players competed for the trophy which was won by Gary Jones. This competition will be held on an annual basis in the future at Raymond’s home club at Aberdour for his friends, colleagues, and workmates or anyone interested in playing or spectating and supporting the foundation. News of the next scheduled event will be posted here so please watch this space.
72 HOLES IN A DAY AT ST ANDREWS
Friends of a popular Limekilns teacher who died in March have pledged to support his family in their wish to set up a foundation in his honour. Ray’s brother David Fernie and close friends Graeme Mackay, Grant McMahon, and Keith Sturton played 72 holes of golf in one day, starting at 6 am, to raise more than £5,000 towards the creation of the Raymond Fernie Foundation to continue Ray’s legacy. The boys played the 72 holes in favourable conditions for about 10 hours alternating between the Eden and the Strathtyrum courses and, fuelled by jam sandwiches and bridies provided by the support team. Keith Sturton managed to finish on 2 over par – the others were rather less competitive but nevertheless put in an impressive performance.
A weary Graeme, 39, from Limekilns, said: “We all grew up in Limekilns together and moved away to different areas, but we still played a lot of golf together. “We thought we could do something fun which would go towards the Foundation; youth employability was something Ray was so passionate about. He was a very private person to the point where I didn’t know about his illness and it was a complete shock, but it just reiterated who he was.”
The Foundation wishes to thank the St Andrews Golf Links management team for their support in making the courses available and enabling this event to succeed.
FUNDRAISING GOLF EVENTS
In 2014, Raymond and a couple of his friends – who had met at their radiography sessions in 2012 – decided to ‘give something back’ and hold a charity golf event to raise funds for The Jamie King Fund (a charity set up by their oncology consultant, Professor McLaren, to help raise awareness of prostate cancer and improve the delivery and effectiveness of radiotherapy for men with the disease).
Two very successful events were held at The Royal Burgess Golf Club, Edinburgh in 2014 and 2015 where more than £50,000 was raised. A third event was held in 2019, raising more than £30,000. These funds have enabled Professor McLaren to start an important new curative radiotherapy treatment called prostate SBRT. Professor McLaren has also been able to employ a Research Fellow who is currently working on papers in this field. These papers are being published as part of The Raymond Fernie Fellowship.
Following Raymond’s sad death, the Fernie family was keen to set up a charity in his name to further Raymond’s work in supporting young people to find positive outcomes.
We decided that our next event would be a joint fundraiser which would benefit both the Jamie King Fund and The Raymond Fernie Foundation. Sadly, due to the Covid pandemic, this event had to be postponed from 2020 but we plan to hold the event in May 2022. The format will be a golf day – this will include breakfast, and a round of golf followed by lunch with speakers. Funds will be raised through ticket sales, auctions and raffles. Teams of four will be invited to enter, with a maximum number of 20 teams.
We will include updates on this event on the website in late Summer.
