Congratulations to David Lewis and his team who, yesterday, progressed to the final of this Golf Ireland Leinster competition.
The boys faced an uphill battle yesterday, playing Carlow with three matches away but they came up trumps with an excellent win and some fine individual performances. Davie looked after the home pairs while Ben Crowley traveled to Carlow with the team. President Neville, Lady Captain Amanda and Vice Captain John were all at the matches to lend support.
At home we had William O’Riordan out first. William is one of a group of players who have been so unlucky in the past 3 years not to win this pennant and he was well up for the fight. Turning three up after wins on the eighth and ninth holes, he went four up with another win on the tenth and managed his match well from there to win 3&2 after a fine win on the fifteenth hole and a lip out for a birdie half on the sixteenth.
This wasn’t the first point on the board for Greystones however. In Carlow, Ruadhán Murray was playing a blinder. He won the first hole before loosing two on the bounce to go one down through three holes.He then went on to win the next nine holes to close his match 8&6.
Toby Murphy was playing second at home and turned two down, losses on eleven and twelve took the match to four down but Toby being Toby, he dug in, winning the next three holes before an unfortunate loss on the sixteenth had him dormie two down.
Our second man out in Carlow was Milo Doyle who like Toby, was down at the halfway stage. Milo turned three down and, also like Toby, Milo fought hard to get the match back to one down with four to play with wins on the thirteenth and fourteenth. He lost the fifteenth and could only halve the sixteenth and was, again like Toby, dormie two down.
It was all getting very tight…
Our final match saw Marc Lawless playing third in Carlow. Marc is having a great year and played well again yesterday. He was two up through nine but from there the match got extremely tight with both sides perhaps sensing that it could be the decider. Holes were halved from the tenth through the thirteenth before Marc exerted a little extra pressure with a win on the fourteenth to go three ahead with four to play. The fifteenth was halved but Marc found trouble on the sixteenth to go back to two up but crucially with only two holes let to play.
So… two points in the bag and dormie two down in two and dormie two up in the final match – all very exciting for those lucky enough to be there.
The first of the remaining points went to Carlow with Toby coming up just short, winning the seventeenth but only halving the eighteenth to loose 1 down.
Milo also won his seventeenth to take his match to the eighteenth tee but didn’t have to finish as Marc came up trumps with a well earned half on his seventeenth to win his match 2&1 and the point that takes the lads to the Leinster final..
May congratulations to David, Ben and all the squad.
