Ireland’s Gavin Moynihan shrugged off a quintuple bogey nine to claim an incredible victory in the Carrick Neill Scottish Strokeplay at Panmure after a late collapse from Australia’s Geoff Drakeford.
The Melbourne player had led from the first round on Friday all the way to the 71st tee but bogeys on both the last two holes handed the title to Moynihan, who had earlier recovered from an even worse calamity.
The 19-year-old Dubliner suffered his nine at the 12th on the Barry Links in Sunday morning’s third round but still managed to finish with a 68, although that still left him six strokes behind Drakeford with just the final round to play.
However Moynihan kept up the pace in the final round with a three-under 67 for a five-under aggregate of 275, and the experienced Australian folded under the pressure when the young Irishman drew level with him late in the final round.
There’s few players able to win a top tournament with a nine on their card, and Moynihan thought his tournament was over after he needed two drops during a series of disasters on the 12th.
“I was going quite well at four-under, but after that I thought it was all over and I was just aiming for a top 15 at best,” he said.
“Conditions were that good that I felt somebody was going to go low. There was no way I thought I would be standing here later in the day having won the tournament.”
The catalogue of disaster was a drive into a poor lie in the rough, a “straight right” second shot that was lost, a fourth plugged in the hazard requiring a second penalty drop, an approach and three putts. However, Moynihan manfully regathered his cool with two immediate birdies and sank a 15-footer for a three on the last, he thought mostly to restore a bit of confidence and pride.
In the final round a couple of bogeys on the tough front nine in stronger winds set him back, but an eagle at the 14th meant he set a target of five-under.
Drakeford meanwhile was “cruising” having started the final round at eight-under with all three rounds in the 60s, and still lying at seven-under with a three shot lead at the turn. However, a double bogey at the 12th combined with Moynihan’s eagle meant the pair were tied, and at the 17th the Australian made a crucial mistake taking driver and carving his tee shot into the gorse, taking bogey to fall out of the lead for the first time.
Up the last, requiring a birdie for a play-off, he found the left greenside bunker instead and couldn’t get up and down, falling into a tie for second two shots back with England’s Nick Marsh and another Irishman, Jack Hume.
“It was a bit trickier this afternoon but I didn’t feel anything different in the final round, I just hit a couple of stray shots and paid the price,” said Drakeford.
“It’s just one of those courses that you just can’t miss, and if you do it’s brutal.”
Moynihan is the first Irishman to win the Scottish Strokeplay for 33 years since 1995 Ryder Cup hero Philip Walton a fellow member of the Island club in Dublin and returns the favour after Scotland’s Jamie Savage won the Irish title two weeks ago.
The 19-year-old played for GB&I in last year’s Walker Cup, for Europe in the Junior Ryder Cup in Chicago in 2012, and has just finished his first year at Alabama, who won the American College championship last week.
Hume and Marsh both shot final round 66s to move up into a share of second with the best Scot being Scott Gibson, the internationalist from Southerness, who lay just two behind at the halfway point but shot 73 and 72 on the final day to finish in a tie for seventh.
Sixteen-year-old Murray Naysmith, competing in his first senior men’s event, shot a final round 69 to finish inside the top 10, with Blairgowrie’s Bradley Neil tied for 15th on four-over.