Reigning Irish PGA Championship winner Niall Kearney has secured his first win of the 2025 Irish Region campaign at the Beaverstown 40th Anniversary Pro-Am.
Playing in the afternoon wave, Kearney hunted down the early pace setter, Richard O’Donovan and Simon Thornton and Richard Kilpatrick, who’d drawn level with O’Donovan from the afternoon starters, and eventually overtook them with an eagle on the fifth – his 14th – to take a lead that he’d never surrender.
O’Donovan came racing from the traps in the morning, birdieing five of his first eight holes to take an early advantage but found the going tougher on the way home. Despite a late double bogey which followed a bogey and a birdie on the previous two holes, he set the target at -3.
Thornton, who’d begun on the first hole in the shotgun start format, made four birdies and one bogey on the front to turn in a share of the lead, but the Spa pro twice recovered from bogeys to birdie the next on the back nine but couldn’t find a way to overtake the Lucan man.
Kilpatrick, playing the ninth first, had started with a birdie but two bogeys left him an uphill battle, but he struck back with back-to-back birdies on 17 and 18, then added another on the second but reached the last needing a birdie at least. He duly obliged, making it a three-way tie at -3, but it was Dubliner Kearney who came out on top, having birdied the 10th – his opening hole and then added two more on 13 and one. A bogey on the fourth left him ground to make up, but the eagle on five proved pivotal and was enough to see him take victory by one stroke.
“It’s always nice to win, isn’t it,” he said afterwards. “I was actually on a stag all weekend, just got home last night, so I need to start getting myself onto more stag weekends, I think. I’m not a huge drinker, so I was kind of taking it easy, but yeah, I was a bit jaded this morning, thank God for the afternoon tee time.”
It’s been a long time since Kearney had played Beaverstown, but it holds good memories nonetheless.
“I won, a Leinster Under-15 Boys here, I think 23 years ago, and it might be the last time I was here, to be honest with you,” he admitted. “My playing partners were aware that there was a -3 recorded in the morning, so they made sure I knew that when I got to -4, but I wasn’t looking at leaderboards or anything, I just knew that it was unlikely that there was going to be a seven- or eight-under out there because it was playing quite tough.”
The win follows a T11 finish at the Premier Pro-Am in Thurles and a T12 finish in the PGA Open Series event at Bovey Castle in England last week, and Kearney’s drive to compete remains as high as ever.
“I’m going to play a few Clutch Pro Tour events over the next few weeks and I’m going to keep playing on the region because I love playing on the region and I love playing competitive golf period,” he said. “And I’m really looking forward to going to Monkstown to defend my Irish PGA Championship. That one is definitely penciled in!”
Next up for Kearney and the Irish PGA Professionals is the Ardglass Pro-Am on Friday, and it’s another event that he can’t wait to get his teeth into.
“Yeah, I’m really looking forward to that one,” he revealed. “I know Paul Vaughan up there and I played a bit with Cormac [Sharvin] over the years. So yeah, I’m playing on Friday afternoon and I’m really looking forward to it because it’s supposed to be a great course.”
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