Simon Thornton showed exactly why he’s been the standout performer on the PGA in Ireland region in 2025 with victory at the Vermilion Energy Carne Pro-Am, making it three wins in eight starts.
An opening round of 71 saw the County Down native trailing early pace-setters Colm Moriarty and Andrew Hickey by four shots overnight, but with an early tee time to look forward to on Sunday, nobody was counting him out of the running.
With three par-5s in the first nine holes of Carne’s original layout, there were always going to be opportunities to eat into the deficit, and Thornton did exactly that by birdieing each of the par-5s but dropping a shot on the par-4 eighth.
Danger lurks on almost every hole, however, and Moriarty, also out early, fell victim to a double bogey on the par-4 second but also made three birdies to pull clear, but Thornton recorded his first par-4 birdie of the final day on the 12th and followed up with the clutch moment on 13 where an eagle-three saw him hit the front for the first time.
“I knew that there was only one par-5 on the back 9, so if I was gonna make a really low score, then I had to birdie par 3s or the par 4s but it was no good doing that if you didn’t take advantage of the par-5.
“I hit a great drive and I thought I’d be further up, so I had quite a bit of way in and I hit rescue in. I hit a beautiful shot to about 10 feet, thankfully holed the putt, because I’d hit it on in two yesterday and three putted it, so it was a bit of a revenge on that hole.
“But yeah, listen, always to get an eagle is nice, isn’t it? You can pick up one on the field really.”
Not content with parring his way home, he added further birdies on 15 and 17 which provided additional cushion and his seven-under round was the lowest of the day by three and saw him run out a four-stroke victor on -8 with Moriarty and David Higgins sharing second on -4.
Richard Kilpatrick’s four-under was the second best on the final day and he took solo fourth at -3, with Tim Rice, Damian Mooney and Eddie Tracey rounding out the top five.
“I’m not really a scoreboard watcher or anything,” Thornton said. “I obviously knew what the scores were after day one, but I don’t really look at it during the day at all, and we couldn’t anyway because of coverage where we are. We didn’t have the app going, so we didn’t know where what other people we’re doing.
“But listen, on a day like that, you can shoot three- or four-under, but you can also shoot three- or four-over, so I knew even though Colm and Andrew had put good scores in on day one, they could easily shoot a couple over, so I knew that once I eagled that par-5, mentally I knew was right there and if I could sneak a couple of others I’d have a good sniff at it.
“But yeah, shooting seven-under-par and weather like that, you’d like to hope that you get across the line.”
Having previously triumphed at the season-opening Premier Pro-Am in Thurles and followed up with a victory in his home county at Ardglass, the victory at Carne sees him stretch his lead over Rice at the top of the Elavon Order of Merit rankings and mentally shortens the drive home.
“I’ve an ETA of 2:00 am at home now,” Thornton said having just left Belmullet, “but the golf being good and winning eases the drive a bit.”
It was a week of heavy travelling prior as he’d been at Royal Dornoch on the west coast of Scotland for the PGA Open Series event where he finished in a share of fifth.
“I had a 4am alarm on Friday morning,” he explained, “a five-and-a-half-hour drive, the ferry across to Belfast, the drive down to Newcastle, an hour-and-a-half at home, pick up my daughter, change car, then another five-and-a-half hour drive down to Belmullet and arrived at 10 o’clock.
“Thankfully I had a late tee time on Saturday so there was no alarm needed.”
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