Ireland will have four representatives in the final 16s at the Men’s and Women’s Spanish Amateur Championships as Olivia Costello and Kate Lanigan won their round of 32 matches at Club de Golf el Prat and John Doyle and Luke O’Neill battled through at Guadalhorce.
Lanigan, taking on Swede Havana Torstensson, began her match on the 10th and lost the opening two holes to fall 2DOWN, but battled her way back to level the match on 15 and then took her first lead with a win on 17. It didn’t last long, however, and Torstensson struck back to turn all-square, before gaining the advantage again on the second and doubling it on the third.
Lanigan halved the deficit with a win on the fifth, but still found herself down by a hole as they reached the eighth. A birdie on the toughest hole on the course won Lanigan the hole and when Torstensson made a mistake on the ninth, the Maynooth student held her nerve to close out the match with a par and set up a round of 16 tie with China’s Liz Siyu.
It was a little more straightforward for Costello who never trailed, but found herself pegged back from a 2UP lead through six to be tied after eight. But she hit the front again on nine and took a 2UP lead to the 17th where a par was enough to secure the tie and a 3&1 victory. She now faces Engand’s Charlotte Naughton in the last 16.
At Guadalhorce, near Malaga, Brian Doran couldn’t repeat the heroic comeback of the round of 64 and fell 3&2 to England’s Eliot Baker, but Connemara’s Luke O’Neill and Fota Island’s John Doyle kept the tricolour flying.
O’Neill and Welshman Matt Roberts traded the two opening holes, but the Galway native got his nose in front again on the 12th – their third – and this time refused to surrender it, pulling away to secure a 4&3 win and will be pitted against Switzerland’s Tom Mao in the round of 16.
Doyle too started on the 10th against Spaniard Gonzalo Cancedo Onieva, but fell behind early. Twice Onieva stretched the advantage to 2UP, and twice Doyle hit back to halve the deficit immediately, but it wasn’t until the second hole – their 11th – that he was back on level terms.
Onieva took the lead again on the sixth, but Doyle again pegged him back before taking his first lead of the match with a birdie on the difficult eighth and when both players carded matching bogeys on nine, Doyle was through and now faces France’s Hugo Le Goff.
All of the round of 16 encounters take place on Friday afternoon and you can follow live scoring for the women’s matches here and the men’s matches here.
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