AMATEUR OPEN:IF A pernickety wind which whipped in off the bay played havoc with most of the field in the first round of the AIB Irish Amateur Open Championship at Royal Dublin yesterday, one man – another of those precocious teenagers who gravitate to golf with a natural talent and a mindset to work hard – provided all the answers to the tough questions posed by the links.
Jeff Hopkins, who once trialled with Liverpool and Blackburn Rovers before diverting towards golf after suffering from Osgood-Schlatter disease, defied the elements to shoot a one-under-par 71.
That included a penalty shot he called on himself when the wind buffeted him on the par five 11th fairway and the head of his seven-iron nudged the ball as he addressed it. Nevertheless, he salvaged a par.
On a day when the wind, into the faces of players on the way out and behind on the return journey, caused scores to soar, the Skerries teenager’s round left him a shot clear of Ulsterman David Kernohan, with Connor Doran, Luke Lennox and Eddie McCormack on 73.
These past few years have been a whirlwind for Hopkins, who got a handicap of 26 when he took up the sport as a 14-year-old. He was down to seven in a year. He was a promising soccer player with St Kevin’s Boys in Dublin and went on trials to Anfield and Ewood Park. He also dabbled with Gaelic football and hurling before switching to golf after a succession of knee-related injuries.
Once the decision to concentrate on golf was made, Hopkins – and his parents – took it seriously. He left school at 15, went to the Sports Academy in Essex for two years, where he combined A Level studies with golf and psychology, and spent six months working on his game in Spain. Now the 18-year-old is a plus-one handicapper with designs on a professional career.
“Obviously, your main objective if you are going to be a golfer is to turn pro and get on the circuit,” he said.
All in good time, you feel. For now, Hopkins, who last year won the Leinster Under-17s and was a quarter-finalist in the recent West of Ireland championship, is focused on the job at hand here. His round featured four birdies, three bogeys and an extraordinary par on the last, where his wedge approach hit the wooden footbridge over the hazard adjacent to the 18th green and got a kind bounce onto the putting surface.
It was a break Hopkins deserved, given how he had negotiated the only sub-par score of the day.
But the performance of David Kernohan, a much-travelled man who has returned to his roots in the North in an attempt to make a name for himself, was also admirable. The 31-year-old Ballymena-born player spent 22 years in Perth – where he represented Western Australia – before moving to London for four years and, then, back home just 18 months ago.
Yesterday, Kernohan, a plus-three handicapper who plays out of Galgorm Castle, holed a 30-footer for par on the 12th to kickstart a run home that saw him birdie the 13th and eagle the 14th.
