John Murphy shot a second successive four-under round of 68 to climb into the top five with 18 holes to go in the Clutch Pro Tour’s Mannings Heath Masters, but both Alex Maguire and Paul McBride’s bids to secure promotion to the HotelPlanner Tour took a hit as each missed the cut by the minimum.
The Kinsale man came into the third-to-last event on the schedule ranked sixth in the Order of Merit and could climb into the top three with a win this week. But with an afternoon tee time and 11-under already in the clubhouse, he had lots of ground to make up. A birdie on the second was close to the ideal start, but he followed it with eight pars and then dropped a shot on 11 and it appeared that his chances of a second win of the season were slipping away.
But a birdie blitz over the closing stretch saw him pick up four strokes in the space of five holes to get to within three of the lead at eight-under.
Marc Boucher is the only other Irishman with a final-round tee time. The Carton House man followed his two-under round of 70 with a 71 to reach three-under and a share of 36th.
But it was Maguire, second on the Order of Merit, and McBride in third, who had most at stake as the Clutch Pro season reaches crunch time.
Fresh off a win at The K Club Pro-Am and having to rearrange his travel to Mannings Heath, McBride was understandably slow to get off the mark in round one. Three birdies on the back nine got him to two-under overall, but a bogey at the last eventually proved costly as the cut line fell at -2.
Maguire needed to pick up one stroke more than McBride having opened with a one-over 73, but he too got himself to -2 for the week with one hole remaining but, like his compatriot, bogeyed it to fall the wrong side of the mark.
To make matters worse, Angus Flanagan, winner of the last event which propelled him into the top 10 on the Order of Merit, holds a share of the lead with Oliver Sullivan at -11, one ahead of Jake Ayers, with Giles Evans – ranked seventh – in solo fourth at -9, one ahead of the five-strong group that includes Murphy at -8.
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