A busy weekend saw the final of the National Putting Championship being held on the putting course last Saturday, the September Monthly Medal on Sunday incorporating the final round of the Golfer of the Year. These competitions added to the Ladies All Ireland Fourball final last Wednesday and Thursday set the place alight with visitors and members.
The All Ireland Ladies Fourball championship was won by the ladies from The Castle Golf Club, Dublin, for the second year in succession. In the semi final they defeated Ballybofey & Stranorlar easily enough and progressed to meet Waterford in the final. Waterford overcame Birr in the other semi final after a close match. In the final Castle had the upper hand in the early holes but true to form Waterford battled back to reduce the deficit and the end result was 2 matches to 1 with the other match halved.
The National Putting Champion for 2006 is Martin Howlett from Waterford representing the Williamstown Club. Quite a large entry in the first round was reduced down to the top six for the final. Mary Sheehy from Tralee led the first round qualifiers from Sean O’ Dwyer, Martin Howlett, Niall Morrison, Peter Gowen and Jonathan Stewart. In the final 18 holes Martin prevailed by three shots from last year’s runner up Sean O’ Dwyer with Mary Sheehy filling third spot. So Martin and partner will wing their way to Copenhagen and then on to Sweden for some golf and sightseeing as part of the prize. This prize was kindly donated by Scandanavian Airlines in conjunction with Visit Denmark, Skane Tourism and Wonderful Copenhagen and was open to golf clubs in Ireland and some societies as well. What a lovely prize to win for two rounds of putting.
The September Monthly Medal was decided on Sunday and this was also the last round of the Golfer of the Year for both Ladies and Men. As usual there were three categories for the men and the ladies category. Best score of the day in the Men’s section was recorded by Denis Treacy who returned a great 37 points in category 1. Category 2 was won by Dan Kavanagh with 34 points and Category 3 was won by Tim Kavanagh with 29 points.
Denis is certainly the man in form at the moment as this victory comes immediately after his success in the Lady Captain’s Prize to Men only two weeks ago. He had a bad start by dropping three shots to par on the first two holes but then proceeded to cover the next thirteen holes in one over par gross before dropping four further shots on the last three holes by having double bogies on the sixteenth and eighteenth.
After all of that any further luck ran out for him as in the Golfer of the Year competition Andrew Nixon drew level with long time leader Richie Guilfoyle and on a countback Andrew came out the winner. In third place came Denis Treacy only one point behind. So heartiest congratulations to Andrew on his great achievement.
In the Ladies Medal category Andrew’s wife Rebecca had a runaway win by scoring 39 points to easily win the medal. So a great weekend for the Nixons but unfortunately for her she failed to overhaul the winner of the Ladies Golfer of the Year but was overall second to Lynda Hickey.
Results: National Putting Championship:
Winner: Martin Howlett(Williamstown)
Second: Sean O’ Dwyer(Stackstown)
Third: Mary Sheehy(Tralee)
September Monthly Medal:
Category 1. Denis Treacy(9)……….37 points.
Category 2. Dan Kavanagh(13)……34 points.
Category 3. Tim Kavanagh(20)……29 points.
Ladies: Rebecca Nixon(28)…..39 points.
Golfer of the Year
———————.
Men………Andrew Nixon
Ladies………Lynda Hickey
Add A Comment
You must be logged in to post a comment.