GOLF: The infamous road-hole 17th at St Andrews proved the stumbling block for Ireland's Alison Coffey in her bid to retain the St Rule Trophy as Scotland's Heather Stirling completed a historic hat-trick in Scottish golf. Stirling became the first Scottish player to win the Helen Holm strokeplay championship, the Scottish Championship and the St Rule Trophy all in the space of five weeks.
Coffey, four behind starting the last round, had reduced the deficit to one shot after nine holes. One off the pace playing the 17th, Coffey's chances were blown away when she found the road bunker with her third shot to the par five.
Coffey sent a sand-wedge approach into the dreaded bunker, was plugged against the face, took two to get out and ran up a triple bogey eight and with it the chance of a second successive title.
"The wind got up just as I played the shot and pushed the ball into the bunker which was bad enough but the lie I had was awful, right up against the face," she said.
Stirling was unaware of what was happening in the group behind, which included Coffey. "When I three putted the last for a bogey five, I though it was going to prove costly. It was tough on Alison to get into such a bad lie at the 17th. The Old Course is much tougher and I had to work hard for the figures in the last round," said Stirling, now certain of a place on the Curtis Cup team to play the US in Pittsburgh in August.
There was some consolation for the large Irish contingent in the field when Coffey, Clare Coughlan (Cork) and Trish Mangan (Ennis) won the team event. Their total of 451 left them three ahead of England, with Scotland, last year's winners, in third place on 455.
Graeme McDowell's fourth-place finish in the NCAA Championship finals at Columbus, Ohio, may have been his last major competition as an amateur. The Rathmore Club player, who withdrew from the British Amateur Championship last week, is likely to join his former Walker Cup team-mates Michael Hoey, Nick Dougherty and Luke Donald in the paid ranks with the Mark McCormack International Management Group.
McDowell, who was ranked first in the Golfweek.com and Golfstat Cup rankings, and was a finalist for the Ben Hogan Award, was favourite to make the NCAA finals his seventh and biggest win of the college season. However, he finished fourth after leading going into the final round.
"Obviously I would have taken this finish at the start of the week," he said. "I got off to a slow start in the final round and couldn't get much going at all. I'm a little disappointed, but in hindsight it's still a respectable finish."
McDowell and his UAB team-mates finished 27th overall at 1176, 16 strokes over par. Minnesota won the team championship, finishing two-under-par at 1134, four strokes ahead of Georgia Tech (1138). The winner of the coveted individual title was Tony Matteson (Georgia Tech) who closed with a final round of 67 for an eight-under-par 276.
Belfast's James Clarke is one of four University of Rhode Island golfers who have been honoured by the New England Golf Association as All-New England selections, in a vote conducted by all of the region's head coaches.
Junior Michael Carbone and senior Tom Giles were named first team performers while Clarke and David Spitz were honoured on the second-team. Clarke averaged 75.0 strokes per round for the Rams and had two top-five finishes this season, including a fifth-place finish at the Atlantic 10 Championship.
