Ronan Mullarney fired his best round of the week in the final round of the Alps Tour’s Memorial Giorgio Bordoni by AON at Italy’s Golf Club La Pinetina in Como to secure a fourth-place finish while Paul Murphy’s three-under saw him rise to a tie for 14th.
Coming off the back of his maiden Alps Tour win at Austria’s Gosser Open, back-to-back two-under 68s had Mullarney just inside the top-10 coming into today’s final round, and despite an early bogey on the par-5 third hole, he responded with birdie-threes at four and six before adding another at the par-5 eighth to make the turn at -2 for the day.
He’d add two more back-to-back at the par-3 14th and par-4 15th holes to get to -4 for the day, and that’s where he’d remain to finish on -8 for the tournament in a two-way tie for fourth place, while Holland’s Kiet Van der Weele was the runaway winner shooting -19 for the three rounds to secure a nine-stroke victory.
“I played grand,” Mullarney said afterwards, “but it was a kind of a strange week. There were some good parts and some not so good parts. I managed my game quite well, but there were stages throughout the week where each part of my game was bad but then stages where each part was good so it was a kind of a mixed bag, but the scores were quite good and they added up to something pretty good in the end. But it’s a very good golf course, and the rough is savage. It’s really thick so there was a premium on hitting fairways, you couldn’t just take out driver and wail away.
“It’s absolutely great for confidence building,” he added, “there’s times where I say that but I’m really happy with the scores because there’s times where I feel like I hit it really well, hit all my putts on my lines, and I could shoot two or three over and miss the cut, so the scores were good but how I got there mightn’t always be that 100%, but still, I’m pretty happy with it.”
“It’s clearly possible,” he replied when asked about Van der Weele’s winning tally, “but what did he win by, eight or nine? That’s pretty phenomenal scoring so fair play to him. That’s his second win.”
The Dutchman leapfrogs Mullarney and previous Order of Merit leader Quim Vidal into first place on the season-long rankings, but courtesy of his fourth-place to Vidal’s missed cut, Mullarney remains in second, but he admits that it’s still too early yet to be thinking about his position in the rankings.
“It’s great,” he said, “it’s a great start, but it’s still so early in the season that it’s still pretty pie in the sky as yet.”
Paul Murphy’s closing 67 sees him climb to 33rd in the Order of Merit. The Rosslare man had four birdies and a solitary bogey as he followed up his sixth place finish in Austria with another solid week in Italy, but Paul McBride, playing alongside Murphy, failed to capitalise on his opening rounds as he shot a closing three-over that included a costly double-bogey at the last.
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