On a cold Winter's evening, Thursday 4th of January 1990 at 7.30 pm., a meeting was held at the Cypriot Community Centre in Wood Green, by twenty two Cypriot golfers. The purpose of the meeting was to form the Cypriot Golf Society.
At the time most Cypriot golfers played at Trent Park Golf Club, which was where the first Ryder Cup type matches were played between Cypriot teams and British teams. The first match was played in 1986 for the purpose of raising money for charity. The British team won the inaugural match, but the Cypriot team won the two following matches, in 1987 and 1988.
In 1989, the Cypriot team, for the third time in a row, again won the Ryder Cup format competition and as usual the players of both teams met in the evening to celebrate and present the trophies at a local Greek restaurant. The Cypriot team included Andreas Petrou (captain), Kevin Michael, Kyriacos Tsirpis, Tasos Charalambous, Jack Costi, Minas Nicolaou, Hambis Mouyia, Andreas Mouyia, Andreas Iouliou and Peter Sandamas.
By now this had established itself as a successful and enjoyable competition and several of the Cypriot golfers began to think about forming their own golf society. Following on from this, at about the same time, Peter Sandamas published an article in the Parikiaki newspaper, Christmas1989 edition, called 'Three Wishes' after having spoken to Cypriot golfers about their three greatest golfing ambitions. Many of the players that were asked confirmed that the forming of a Cypriot golf society was in fact one of their wishes and desires. In the same article an invitation was made to all Cypriots who were golfers to attend a meeting to be held on Thursday, 4 January 1990 at the Cypriot Community Centre, the aim of which would be to discuss the formation of the society.
On the day, most of the 22 Cypriot golfers that attended the evening meeting knew each other but there were at least 8 new faces. The new faces that were there, up until reading the article in the newspaper, thought that there were no other Cypriot golfers and talking amongst themselves, their constant chat was, 'I thought I was the only Cypriot playing golf'.
The inaugural meeting was very orderly and those that attended, proposed and elected to form the 'Cypriot Golf Society' and thus our society came into being taking both shape and form.The meeting further proceeded to establish, what should be the aims and objectives of this society. A basic constitution was proposed and elected, a prospective membership list was made, the annual subscription was set at ?10, a committee was elected and the Annual General Meeting date was set. In practice this resulted in much hard work to formalise everything and particular credit must be given to Andreas Petrou and Peter Sandamas for this.
Just a few days before the first event took place, the Bank of Cyprus (London) Limited agreed to sponsor the Society's four major competitions which was a prestigious boost for the Society and to this day they are still our biggest sponsor.The inaugural event, the Bank of Cyprus Foundation Trophy was held at Enfield Golf Club on Wednesday 28th March 1990. By now there were 40 members in the society and 35 of them were today competing in the first competition. It was a historic day, everyone was enthusiastic and felt very proud at the sense of achievement. The formation of the society was long overdue and with the strike of the ball for the Captain's Drive by Peter Sandamas, this very first event was underway at 8.30 am.