Local eyes turned to Grange international Hazel Kavanagh and last year's winner, Rebecca Coakley, the Australian playing out of Carlow, to provide some relief from the Scottish names that dominated the top of the leaderboard going into the third and final round of the Irish Women's Open Amateur Strokeplay Championship here yesterday.

Hopes, however, evaporated midway through the afternoon as tournament leader Anne Laing impressively held position with a one-over-par 73 following earlier rounds of 71 and 70 for a four-shot championship win over compatriot and nearest rival Vikki Laing.

Laing's two-under-par 214 total was the only sub par score in the field.

Sharing the same birthday, but unrelated to Vikki, 26-year-old Anne Laing was quite a surprise package. Expecting little in the way of international honours, she returned to golf last March having been out of the game for 10 months with a broken shoulder.

A Scottish international for seven years and a former Scottish amateur champion, Laing braced herself for the charge which, in the end, failed to materialise.

"It was a kind of mind game. Anyone with a plus three handicap is capable of shooting a round of 65 or 66 around here," said Laing of last year's winner, Coakley.

It was Kavanagh, though, who departed the most disappointed with a final effort which left her joint fourth after a closing round of 73. A despairing triple bogey seven on the ninth hole scuttled what might have been the challenging round of the day.

"I started well then I made a balls of it," said the 1994 and 1999 winner quite candidly. "I'd a triple seven, which was stupid. I'm very disappointed. I thought I was heading for a great score until the ninth. In the morning I thought I'd a chance of catching the leaders, but that killed it."

Kavanagh found herself in a greenside bunker, was a little too delicate and failed to get out first time, then edged the ball 50-yards over the green with her second attempt. From there it was a frustrating damage limitation exercise.

Anne, playing with her 21-year-old compatriot Vikki, a golf scholarship student in Berkeley, California, went around in one over par. Three consecutive birdies on the par four 10th, and par five 11th and 12th holes held together the back nine, which she balanced with four birdies and four bogeys.

A changeable day with the wind picking up over the final few hours, Laing was unperturbed by the conditions.

But her only other win this year, a Scottish county championship title, was all she had to show for the season.

"I found it quite difficult because I wasn't playing as well as I was on the first day," she said.

"I was just trying to hold it together."