Ronan Mullarney will be in the final group in Friday’s final round of the Alps de Las Castillas in Albacete, Spain after the Galway man produced an eight-under 64 to end the day in solo third and just two back.
A two-under opening round left him in 30th place, and after starting round two with four pars, burning the edges of the hole with birdie putts, it looked as though he might be in for a day of frustration.
A putt finally dropped on the fifth and his birdie account was open and another swiftly followed on the next before two more came on eight and nine to complete a four-under opening nine.
Four more birdies came on the way home as he kept his card blemish free and he admitted that it was one of those rare days when the quality of his play was matched by the numbers on the card.
“I’ve scored quite well a lot of times this year, but I wouldn’t necessarily say my game has been brilliant,” he admitted after his round. “But I was very happy with how I played today. I scored well, but I hit the ball a lot better too and I felt I had control of it, which is always a nice feeling.
“Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy about it when the score is good, but the golf to get the score might necessarily be as as good as it shows, and obviously sometimes it goes the other way as well. So when you play well and score well, you have to be happy.”
With the searing heat in Spain – temperatures reaching a high of 37% in the afternoon – the golf course is playing considerably firmer in the afternoon than it is in the morning.
“Yesterday afternoon, by the end of the round, the greens were quite firm and the ball was taking big hops,” he explained. “But then this morning, playing the third for example, it’s only a wedge, but I pitched it about two feet away and it spun back 18 feet. But by the end of the day again today there’ll be balls skipping on greens. But don’t get me wrong, it’s not firm, it’s just firmer.”
Mullarney is not the only Irishman in the hunt. Hugh Foley took just one stroke more than his fellow countryman to move into the top 10 at -8. The Dubliner made six birdies, an eagle and a solitary bogey enroute to his 65, and Michael Young is just one shot further back though he’ll rue a poor final seven holes in which he dropped three shots.
Robert Moran put up a good fight but the damage done on day one meant that his four-under 68 wasn’t enough to see him through to the final round, while Marc Boucher also misses out.
Italian Matteo Cristoni is the man Mullarney and co. are tasked with chasing down, and he’s the only man who bettered the Galway man’s 64 as he made 11 birdies and two bogeys to card at 63 that is good for a one-stroke lead over Spain’s Antonio Hortal, with Mullarney a shot further back.
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