Rookie Doyle claims Travellers’ trophy

THE 35th Spanish Golf Tour for the Travellers Trophy held last week in Majorca lived up to all its usual expectations and in an exciting battle over the four days amongst the 42 golfers who travelled, it was the 15-handicapped rookie, Sean Doyle from the Arklow Club in Cork, who emerged victorious.

It was obvious after the first round at Poniente that the young rookie, who took up the game a mere two years ago, possessed the ability to mount a serious challenge when he secured victory with 44 points to beat City of Derry’s Karl Doherty (16) on a break of tie. Leo Hickey (22) from the Joondalup Club in Australia finished in third place with 41 points.

Doyle on day two at Santa Ponsa didn’t let up with a great 40 points to secure second place behind City of Derry’s Gary Leckey (11), while Karl Doherty kept up the pressure on the young rookie by posting a creditable 37 points to lie three points behind the leader.

Day 3 at Poniente saw Doyle posting another 38 points to keep the lead by a mere one point (122 to 121) over Karl Doherty who again kept his winning intentions clear with another big score of 40 points to finish in second place behind the 2003 winner of the Travellers’ Trophy, Portadown’s Stephen Wray, who amassed a fine 42 points. Ballynahinch’s Brian McClure (8) was pushed by Doherty into third place on a break of tie.

While the Doyle/Doherty pair were seen as joint-favourites going into the final round lying 7 and 8 points ahead of their nearest contenders, the 2011 winner Brian Long (7) from City of Derry and McClure from Ballynahinch, were not in the final 4-ball just to make up the numbers.

As it transpired, Doyle and Doherty in the early exchanges both played below their best, but it was Doyle who held his nerve to pull further ahead of Doherty by the end of the first 9 holes and steadied himself better in the back 9 to compile a steady 34 points and a grand total of 156 points in the tournament to lift the trophy. Brian McClure closed the gap considerably with a very fine 39 points to finish second overall with 151 points, but five points behind Doyle.

The performance of the fourth day was the exceptional round by Greencastle’s Tommy McBride (5) who, despite dropping three shots in the last three holes, finished with 42 points to take the daily first prize and moved five places up the leaderboard to take third place overall, beating Karl Doherty into fourth place overall on break of tie.

George Pearson (24) from City of Derry played well all week and his 40 points secured second place in the day prizes ahead of McClure.

The team competition was very closely fought over the first three days with no less than 5 of the 11 teams vying for the team prize. In the final day, Brian McClure’s team of McClure, Peter Villa and Davy Jones from City of Derry and Pat Swaine from Portsalon pulled clear of the chasing packs to record a 6-point margin of victory with 352 points.

In second place was the team captained by Tommy McBride, ably supported by North West’s Paul Gallagher, Newtownstewart’s Trevor Finlay and Joondalup’s Leo Hickey.

While the tour dinner and presentation of prizes will take place at the City of Derry Golf Club on Saturday, June 2 at 8.30pm. All of the tour party are invited to attend.

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