Ben Kinsley’s putter went cold just when he needed it to stay hot in the chill West Kilbride winds allowing Ewen Ferguson to complete a remarkable double at the Scottish Boys Championship on Saturday.
The 17-year-old from Bearsden is the first Scot since Steven O’Hara to hold the British and Scottish Boys’ titles at the same time, and only the third player in the last 25 years to do it.
It is a longer timescale, 54 years in fact, since a St Andrews player won the national junior matchplay title and despite being the fourth player from the Home of Golf to reach the final in the last five years, Kinsley was unable to wrest the trophy from Ferguson.
A key spell in the last holes of the morning 18, when Ferguson’s outstanding short game came to the fore with two key chip-ins, gave the top seed a telling four-up advantage at lunch, the same lead he had in winning the British title at Hoylake last August.
He stoutly defended that advantage after lunch, eventually closing the match out six and five.
For Kinsley, 18, it was a third medal in the Boys’ Championship, but a silver one to go with the two bronze medals he took in 2011 and 2013 as a beaten semi-finalist.
Instead of emulating Stewart Whiteford and James White as Scottish Boys’ champions from Fife at West Kilbride, he joined Ian Redford Jr and Ewan Scott (twice) as beaten finalists from the Auld Grey Toun in the championship’s last five years.
The winds gusting up to 20mph made for the most difficult conditions of the week in Saturday’s 36-hole final, and Kinsley admitted the change from the balmy weather of the first five days and seven rounds had unsettled him.
“I struggled a wee bit with the wind and the putter went cold,” he said.
“The 10-foot putts I’d been making all week were the ones I was missing today, and that was definitely the difference between going in square at lunch and being four down.”
Ben had repaired an early two-down deficit with successive birdies at the 11th and 12th, the second coming by way of a fine chip-in over a bunker and seemingly throwing momentum in his favour.
Instead, Ferguson birdied 13 and then chipped in from 20 yards away at the 14th, and eagle two to beat Kinsley’s birdie three and a two-up lead once more.
The 16th and 18th were maybe the key to the whole match, with Ferguson holing from six feet for birdie even after finding a fairway bunker off the tee, while Kinsley missed from 10.
Then at 18, Ferguson again chipped in from just off the putting surface as Ben could not follow him in from 10 feet, and the top seed had a margin of comfort to savour with his sandwiches.
Ben’s bogey on the first hole of the afternoon confirmed that momentum had deserted him, and with the wind playing a big factor he was unable to make headway into the confident Ferguson’s lead.
The 17-year-old new champion has a certain swagger in his style and plays at a pleasing breakneck speed, admitting that “I must be a really annoying person to play against”.
His record has been decent, reaching the quarter-finals of both the Boys last year at Monifieth and men’s national matchplay at Blairgowrie before his Hoylake breakthrough.
He and Kinsley are boys international team-mates, while Ferguson was one of the four Scots in last year’s GB&I junior team.
“There was a bit of pressure on me this week as top seed and I’m pretty pleased at the way I handled it,” he said, having been taken to the 18th in his opening round match on Monday but not seeing it again until his crucial chip-in there before lunch.