The ancient golfing genes proved more resilient than the modern ones at the Scottish Boys Championship yesterday to put St Andrews’ Ben Kinsley into the last 32 by ousting Paul Lawrie’s son Michael.
The 18-year-old St Andrews Club member, third seed and descendant of the major winning Auchterlonie brothers from over a century ago, won both his matches at a wet West Kilbride by the 15th yesterday he hasn’t been beyond there in three rounds so far defeating Lawrie, the 16-year-old younger son of the former Open champion, 5&4 in the third round.
It was Michael’s second successive exit at that stage, and was rarely in doubt after Kinsley, who was with the Scottish senior squad on their warm-weather jaunts this winter, got to three-up after the first eight.
At the short ninth Ben hit the flag with his tee-shot, ending up just a couple of feet away, to win that one as well.
“To be honest, it was a lot closer than 5&4 looks,” said the St Andrian afterwards. It was one of those matches when I managed to win holes at the right time.”
It was certainly far more straightforward than Lawrie’s second round game, which had a bizarre finish in which Musselburgh’s Cameron Blair conceded four of the last five holes he played, including the decisive first extra.
Having surrendered a three-up lead in the last four holes, all of his losses not requiring his opponent to hole out, Blair sliced his tee shot at the first extra hole up the out-of-bounds bank and offered his hand immediately.
The watching Lawrie senior, who followed his boy through every hole of the championship, pleaded with Blair to at least check that his ball was definitely OB but because the concession had already been given, that was it.
That was a good example of how anything can happen in matchplay, but not quite as bizarre as the third round contest between the fourth seed, Scotland boy internationalist Michael Naysmith, and Glenbervie’s Calum Bauchop.
Naysmith, off plus two, would have been giving seven shots in a bounce game to Bauchop, a former Falkirk RFC junior player of the year who took up golf after a serious ankle injury curtailed his rugby.
Bauchop has only been playing for three years and had taken five strokes off his handicap in the last 12 months to get down to 5.2, which isn’t that far off the 5.8 ballot for the championship.
Naysmith was duly and predictably seven-up after 11, but lost the 12th to a par. Bauchop then won the 13th in birdie.
By the time the 16-year-old from Stirlingshire won the 14th and 15th in pars, the whole thing had clearly taken on its own unstoppable momentum. Bauchop won the 16th with another birdie, and by the time they reached the 18th it was all square.
Naysmith’s approach to the green missed right by some margin, betraying that his nerve had surely, and understandably, completely gone. Bauchop duly parred out to win his seventh hole in a row to close out the match by one hole.
“Baffled,” was the winner’s verdict.
“I just managed to win a couple of holes and his head went down pretty quickly after that.”
Lundin’s Niall McMullen stayed on course to meet top seed Ewen Ferguson but needed two extra holes to oust his third round opponent, Dumbarton’s Stuart Lavelle.
Meanwhile, Perthshire hope Callum McGuigan is through to this morning’s fourth round to meet the fifth seed, Irvine’s Stuart Easton.