O'Donovan surges to the summit

GOLF:THE TACTICS employed in annexing a title can range from full-on assault to one of stealth. Richard O'Donovan, who had only survived the midway cut on the mark, had little option but to use the surreptitious route in the East of Ireland amateur championship at County Louth Golf Club in Baltray yesterday. The strategy worked to perfection.

“Awestruck. Unbelievable . . . one flawless round did it,” remarked the 20-year-old from Lucan Golf Club, last year’s Leinster Youths’ champion, after he contrived to mount an against-all-the-odds comeback to claim the title. In shooting a final round 66 for 282, two-under-par, O’Donovan finished two strokes clear of Pat Murray, Dermot McElroy and Gareth Bohill.

On a cool and windy day, O’Donovan’s final round – which saw him go out in a mere 30 strokes, having started on the 10th – enabled him to leapfrog through the field. O’Donovan had started the final round seven shots adrift of Bohill, six behind wunderkind McElroy and five behind former champion Eoin Arthurs and Brian Casey. In short, a lot of quality players lay between him and the trophy.

Yet, O’Donovan had one of those days of days when all the hard work and time on the range and the putting green are rewarded. Having only edged his way into the final two rounds on the cut, O’Donovan – with a 5am alarm call and first on the tee – nudged his way towards contention with a third-round 71 and, then, got into that zone where all he could think about was executing one shot at a time.

In the final round, O’Donovan – a plus-two handicapper who has spent the past two winters working on his game in Spain along with similarly ambitious young Irish players like Jeff Hopkins, Rory McNamara and Brian Casey – contrived to shoot the round of his life so far: with not a single bogey to blot his scorecard, he rolled in six birdies on his way to a superb 66, the best round of the championship.

O’Donovan’s charge started out more as a hesitant jog, as he made par saves from six and eight feet respectively on the 10th and 12th holes (his first and third) which were to prove as important as all of his birdie putts which he rolled in on the 11th (seven feet), 13th (20 feet), 14th (12 feet), 16th (18 feet) and 18th (four feet). His front nine of 30, which included a run of five successive threes, catapulted him up the leaderboard and, as word spread, so too did the size of the gallery increase.

His homeward run on the front nine lacked the fireworks of what had preceded it, but – in the conditions – it was impressive nonetheless. O’Donovan’s sole birdie came on the fourth where he hit a drive and then a nine-iron approach to 15 feet on the 379 yards par four. Remarkably, his score could have been even better: he birdied only one of the four par fives and also saw a six-footer on his last, the ninth, burn the hole.

But he wasn’t complaining; far from it. “It just feels weird – I only made the cut, and I am the winner. My best round ever? I suppose, I’ve just won the East of Ireland. I shot five-under in the European Boys’ Championships (in Slovenia in 2008) and before now that was the best. I’m going to cherish this for the rest of my life. It was a goal to win a championship at the start of the season and to see my name on top of the leaderboard afterwards is unbelievable,” he said.