Carton House golfer, Brendan Lawlor, secured the inaugural ISPS Handa G4D @ the West in County Sligo with a battling performance.
The 27-year-old Louth man, who was also crowned the first ever G4D Open winner at Woburn last year, held his composure in the closing holes after a difficult back nine.
County Sligo was bathed in resplendent sunshine on Tuesday and Lawlor had the perfect start when he pinged his drive down the middle of the opening fairway.
Lawlor birdied three and followed that up with another birdie on nine for the perfect front nine, while local man Alan Gaynor suffered three bogeys on his front nine.
And Lawlor had built up an insurmountable lead as he finished the day with a 73 to back up his opening 74 for a three-shot win.
“It’s the first win this year. It’s a real competitive field, Alan Gaynor was out there chasing my tail coming down the back nine but yeah, played really good golf today,” said Lawlor.
“I was -3 after ten, double bogey on 11 and sort of crawled my way in and hit a few shots to play with. There was only a two-shot lead on 17 so Alan really put it up to me, and unfortunately he doubled it and I bogeyed it; I had three shots lead going into the last so it was comfortable coming down in the last but definitely wasn’t in the back nine.”
David Quinn (Arklow) won the Net event on the day, he had rounds of 75 and 74 while Cian Arthrus (Roganstown), Paul O’Kelly (Portmarnock) and Aidan Grenham (Ballinasloe) rounded off the top five in the gross event.
But for last year’s G4D Open winner, Lawlor, he was delighted with the success of the trial event at County Sligo this week.
“It’s fantastic, I was just chatting to Neil Manchip there and we hope to do a few more of these,” said Lawlor.
“I feel it’s a really good competition to play this time of year, especially on one of the greatest golf courses in Ireland, and if we can be put into maybe two or three in the South or the West, we can get a few of them going and make it competitive in Ireland.”
View the final scoring here
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