A crop of top Kiwi golfers swapped furloughs for fairways this last week as the weekly grind of life as a touring professional resumed.
Lydia Ko was the exception - she earned another week’s rest with the LPGA Tour giving way to the Solheim Cup.
Three of our leading male players, Ryan Fox, Daniel Hillier and Sam Jones, all turned up at the same venue last week in Northern Ireland, Royal County Downs, for the Irish Open, headlined by Rory McIlroy. They were playing on what Rory calls just about his worldwide favourite course. Actually, Royal County Down, a links, is just a short drive from Rory’s home course, Holyrood, where he learnt to play this game.
Sadly, only Sam Jones, out of the three Kiwis, made the cut. Ryan Fox bogeyed the last hole on Day Two to miss the cut by one stroke and Daniel Hillier was left a further shot back. Sam Jones made a reasonable fist of things, competing on this tough course probably for the first time, but a horror stretch on the front nine in Round 3 saw him drop 9 shots in 5 holes. This inevitably dropped him to near the bottom of the field, but he showed admirable determination by playing the last 27 holes of the tournament in 1 over par. For a rookie this shows he’s a fast learner.
Royal County Down is one of Europe’s most demanding layouts. Being a links course it’s fully exposed to the furies of the North Pole’s storm-ridden weather patterns. A good drive upwind might roll out 200 yards, but downwind tee shots were flying out regularly over 350 yards. Rory himself hit one on the last day which sneaked out ever so closely to 400 yards.
Unfortunately for the ever so popular Irishman he, not for the first time this year, let a big title slip from his grasp at the 11th hour on the last day. Here he was rolling along comfortably with a 2-shot lead, deep into the back nine, when inexplicably he 3-putted from 20-odd feet on the 17th green. In the group in front of him, Dane Rasmus Hojgaard was on a birdie tear, picking up shots on 16 ,17, and the par 5 18th . All of which meant that Rory, who had been leading the tournament by 2 shots with three holes left, now stood on the 18th tee, a 548 yard par 5 hole, and needed an eagle just to
force a play-off. And boy did he give it a great shot. A brilliant 350-odd yard drive down the middle of a narrow fairway and then an equally exquisite long iron from 191 yards left him with an eminently straightforward putt of 8 feet for that elusive eagle he so wanted. In front of what must have been one of the biggest galleries at an Irish golf tournament, Rory left his putt millimeters short of the hole. He had to settle for second place, but still commands a huge points lead in the Race to Dubai title.
Speaking of the Solheim Cup, an exact replica of the men’s Ryder Cup, the American women once again triumphed relatively comfortably beating Europe 15 and a half to 12 and half. Maybe someone in American women’s golf might like to look at the idea of America playing Asia rather than Europe. Currently there are 10 Asian golfers in the women’s top 20 world rankings. Europe has 2 and America 5.
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