It was a case of one player got the putts and the other, well, didn’t. A frustrating morning for Max Kennedy saw him bow out of the 129th Amateur Championship at the last-32 stage, bringing Irish interest to an end in Ballyliffin.
Despite only carding one bogey, Kennedy was powerless to stop a rampant Charlie Forster, who played fourteen holes on the Glashedy course in four-under to romp to a 5&4 victory.
Royal Dublin’s Kennedy fell two down through three holes but while there was little to separate both players from the tee, it was on and around the greens where Forster managed to steal a march, rolling in three birdies in a row from the 11th to skip from 2UP to 5UP.
“He played really well all day and so did I,” conceded Kennedy. “I made one mistake on the second, three putted and I didn’t make a bogey after that I made all pars he was four-under, bogey free so just got to get better. Simple!”
Kennedy wasn’t without his chances but he wasn’t able to hole any momentum putts that might have swung the pendulum in his favour, passing up winning birdie putts from 10 and 8 feet on the 7th and 9th.
“Seven and nine were big. I missed a putt on seven to get back to one down from about ten feet, then on nine I hit a good driver and seven wood to 8-feet and his bunker shot hit the pin, was probably going 20-feet by and stopped it. I missed, he made to keep the momentum going.
“He played really well all day and hats off to him he’ll go on and do very well.”
It’s been a very disappointing week for the Irish overall with 26 home hopefuls teeing it up in the 36-hole qualifying but only Kennedy and Sean Keeling progressed through the strokeplay and into the last-64 of the matchplay before Keeling bowed out at the first hurdle on Wednesday.
Kennedy would have been expected to get through his morning match, ranked 68th in the World Amateur Golf Ranking but Forster played at a standard much better than 403rd.
“I played really well all week, didn’t make a whole lot of mistakes, didn’t get too down on myself even when I was down I kept fighting and overall it was a really good week and my game is trending in the right direction.”
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