On a day where all four seasons featured in the WPGA Strokeplay at Donegal Golf Club, it was Ireland’s Hazel Kavanagh and Ali Gray of England who finished as joint winners on one-under-par.
With players from Ireland, England, Scotland, South Africa and Canada in the field, the strokeplay event, which followed the Women in Golf Awards WPGA Pro-Am in association with Titleist, was always going to be hotly contested.
Gray, playing in the second group, got off to a blistering start. The Mossack Hall player eagled the first, then birdied four of the next six to get to six-under through seven in ideal scoring conditions.
The wind picked up considerably thereafter, and heavy rain squalls moved through, and Gray’s final two holes were played in the worst of the conditions and she went bogey-double bogey to close out but grabbed the clubhouse lead at -1.
Other challengers came close, with Scotland’s Heather McRae coming in with a one-over 74, Tara Delaney posting a level-par 73 having been four-under at the turn, and another Scot in Taylor White matching that tally in the penultimate group of the day.
That left only Kavanagh, representing Impact Golf at Leopardstown, as the sole threat to Gray’s lead.
The Ballinteer native and former LET Tour player led her Pro-Am team to a three-point victory on Monday, and she made it a double success by trading four birdies with three bogeys, managing to drop just one shot during the late deluge.
“I’m very happy,” Kavanagh said afterwards. “It’s only my second time coming up here and the conditions were so tough. It’s a cracking golf course and in such good nick, and I just fought my way around it. It was so tough with the wind, but I had a great Pro-Am team yesterday and had such a laugh with them, and today was just a bonus.”
Kavanagh paid tribute to Donegal Golf Club General Manager Lynn McCool for her drive to get the tournament up and running.
“I travelled over to the UK for a couple of years for these events, and the work that Lynn puts in is just incredible,” she said. “She’s out on her own in what she does in the background for women’s golf. I’ve known her since she was 16 and if it wasn’t for her, this wouldn’t happen. And I think it’s going to grow and grow and I spoke to loads of people yesterday who are going to come back here next year.”
The Women’s PGA Cup is scheduled to take place at England’s Carden Park in September, and this was the first event to carry a -one-and-a-half-point weighting towards qualification, meaning that Kavanagh has given herself a good chance of making the Great Britain and Ireland side which will be captained by McRae, who finished tied for fifth this week.
“I was on the team in 2019, and I was too busy with work in the years since, but I’d love to play in it this year so I’m going to look into going across [to mainland UK] to play in some of the other events and try to get more points on the board.”
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