Hayling golfers score a hole-in-one against TV Eggheads

But five players from Hayling proved they are not all about birdies and bogeys – they are a clever bunch too.

Ben Stevenson, Bill John, Terry Hailey, Paul Wiltshire and Phil Merron, who all play at Hayling Island Golf Club, went head to head with the Eggheads on the BBC quiz show.

In a nail-biting climax, they rose to their feet in glory as they beat the brainboxes in the general knowledge round.

It is one of only a handful of times the whole Eggheads team has been beaten.

Chris Penrose from the golf club said: ‘The Eggheads team is dubbed “possibly Britain’s greatest quiz team”, however this reputation meant nothing to the Hayling Hackers.

‘The club holds regular quizzes during the winter months and last autumn, Ben’s wife suggested that Hayling Golf Club quizzers would be a good match for TV’s Eggheads. So an application to the programme was made by the team.’

After getting through auditions in London, the team went to record the show in Glasgow.

Mr Penrose said: ‘The quiz itself was exciting, as one by one the Hayling Hackers succumbed to the superior knowledge of the experts.

‘It did not look good for the final general knowledge round for the lonely Hackers team member Phil Merron to take on the five Egghead brains – but this wasn’t to be the case.

‘Phil managed to answer his questions faultlessly, and it was the experts who faltered at the last of their multiple choice questions.’

The Hayling Hackers had won and as show host Jeremy Vine stated: ‘They can rightly claim that they have beaten Britain’s best quiz team’.  

He also said: ‘The win was exceptional and historic, as it was only the 15th time in over 1,500 shows that a single player had defeated the complete team of Eggheads’.

The golf club celebrated the team’s success when the TV show was screened last Friday.