DARLINGTON’S Ellie Givens has made a positive start to the season by making two cuts in a row Down Under.

Givens, the Ladies European Tour pro at Rockliffe Hall, has been in Australia and New Zealand since January preparing for her first couple of outings of 2015 and the preparations have worked.

She has finished in the money at both the RACV Ladies Masters and the ISPS Handa New Zealand Women’s Open and will aim for that run to continue when she tees off in China at the World Ladies Championship next Thursday.

Givens followed up a tied 46th spot in Australia worth just over £1,000 at the start of month by claiming a little under that figure in New Zealand where she was tied 55th.

Givens was superbly placed after day one in Christchurch by shooting 69 but then dropped down the leaderboard with a 74 and 77 in rounds two and three.

Nevertheless the County Durham golfer, who celebrates her 26th birthday while she is in China next week, can be satisfied as she focuses on building on making back-to-back cuts.

ON the men’s European Tour, Hartlepool’s Graeme Storm made his first cut of the season last week in Joburg and will look to make it two in South Africa this week.

He is at the East London Golf Club at Eastern Cape for the Africa Open after finishing 65th in Johannesburg last Sunday. Barnard Castle’s Rob Dinwiddie is there too and is looking to make his first cut of the year.

AUGUSTA will be as spick and span as ever next month for the first golf major of the season, the US Masters, and this is not the only club getting ready for a big day.

Players all over the UK are gearing up for the start of their amateur season and the captain of Beamish Park, Rob Pattison, has been doing his bit ahead of his club’s first official competition of the 2015 season, the Captain’s Tankard on Sunday March 29.

Pattison, 56, a retired police officer who has been a member of Beamish since he was a teenager, has given the men’s locker room a lick of paint.

He said: "Golf can have an elitist image to people outside their local club if they have never been involved in the sport.

"But the reality is nearly all our members are working lads and the community spirit is no different to what you would get at a football or cricket club. I am handy with a paint brush, so why not?"