Cut line proves a bridge too far for Ireland’s top amateurs

It was blue murder at Royal County Down, the colour that signifies bogeys on the giant scoreboard, dominating in the second round as it had on Thursday.

The leaden squalls that periodically obscured the mountains of Mourne represented a temporary inconvenience, a more destabilising side effect the increase in wind speed, gusts that buffeted the players on greens and elevated tee boxes. Doubt infiltrated the decision-making.

The capricious links terrain sometimes doesn’t discriminate between poor and pure ball-striking in terms of the final resting place of the golf ball. Everyone had a hard luck story; a swing, a bounce, a lie.

For the three Irish amateurs in the field, Jack Hume (21), Gary Hurley (22) and reigning Irish Amateur Open strokeplay champion Gavin Moynihan (20), the invitation to play represented an opportunity to measure their game against professionals.

Some day soon it may be their livelihood but now their focus is on tournaments like next week’s St Andrew’s Links, the British Amateur Championship, the Brabazon Trophy and stretching into the autumn, potentially the American Amateur Championship and the Walker Cup.

Hume, playing in his first Irish Open, endured a restless afternoon. Rounds of 75 and 73, put him at six over for the tournament, he watched the cut mark creep out from four over to five over. It was a whisker away from six in the late evening but never quite got there.

He said: “I made a super putt on 17 to give me a chance and caught a bad break on 18. My iron play was pretty poor all week. It was my first (professional) event so I didn’t really know what to expect. Hung in

“It was a bit of a circus on Monday and Tuesday, a bit of a shock, having people constantly around you, on top of you all the time. I have really enjoyed it. I felt I could easily have been a good few shots lower. It’s nice to know that you don’t play your best and still be around the cut mark.

“I had a few silly doubles on Thursday (four in total) from nowhere. I felt I should have shot 71. I was a bit annoyed. I hung in there well today, three over after five holes but kept going.”

When asked to nominate one memory he’ll take away from the week, the Naas golfer, didn’t hesitate. “A couple of the players were really nice. Pádraig (Harrington) came over on the range for a minute or two. Rory (McIlroy) had a quick chat with us on Monday which was nice. Playing in front of these crowds is cool. I have never done that before.”

It was Moynihan’s third time to play in the tournament and he’s squirrelled away the positives, something he’ll do again after finishing on eight over par, a number that was to prove prominent on the day for the wrong reasons. He ran up a quadruple bogey on the par four second, a calamitous sequence of misfortune that included a ball buried in a bunker face, a free drop and a spike mark.

Few mishaps

He admitted: “Apart from that I played pretty nice, made a mess of a few holes but overall I was happy. . . I’m playing well. The score doesn’t reflect how well I played, just a few mishaps in the round.”

Hurley finished on seven over and offered this appraisal of his experience. “I drove the ball very well but my iron play let me down big time. My short game was very good but sometimes you get some bad lies and it’s quite difficult to get up and down.”