Robin Dawson is looking to stay aggressive this week after he opened up his Alps Tour Q-School Final Stage campaign with a four-under-par 68 to move within one of the early lead.
The Tramore native is in a share of third place alongside Rosslare’s Paul Murphy.
Dawson carded a flawless front nine of 32 with birdies on the first, fourth, sixth and seventh to skip to four-under. He briefly got to five-under with a birdie on the tenth but admitted he slowed up on the way home with a bogey blotting his card on the 15th despite being pleased overall.
“I’ve been pretty confident coming into this week but you never know until you have a scorecard in your hand. I got off to a good start today being 4 under after 9 holes and it could have been a few shots better.
“I halted a little on the back nine, I got into a defense mechanism. Pretty pleased with my 68 today all in all. Hopefully tomorrow another 68 would be nice but we will see it’s a great course so I’m looking forward to it.”
Dawson was playing his first round around Golf Nazionale while Murphy was on the Olgiata course where he carded a 69 to move alongside his fellow Munsterman.
Murphy carded eight birdies, two bogeys and a double-bogey in an eventful opening effort but he continued his momentum after breezing through last week’s First Stage.
Paul McBride and Joseph Hanney are next best of the Irish afters one-under 72s at Olgiata while Ronan Mullarney and Simon Bryan (both +5), John Hickey (+6) and Michael Young (+7) have a mountain to climb to make the two-round cut which will fall at the top-65 players and ties.
Tom Dowdall props up the field on eleven-over.
At the conclusion of the tournament, the top 35 players and ties will be eligible to receive Category 6 membership for the 2023 Alps Tour Season. The rest of the players who will make the cut, and finish between the 36th and 65th position will be eligible to receive Category 8 membership. The remaining players will be eligible for membership in Category 9 for the 2023 Alps Tour Season.
Scoring HERE
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