Golf North » Ross Fisher

Jamie Donaldson happy to be home at Celtic Manor for UK Swing’s Celtic Championshi

Andrew Griffin — Wed, 12 Aug 2020 19:00:29 +0000

Wales’ Jamie Donaldson has finally found form and fitness in the build-up to the new Celtic Championship – the UK Swing’s fourth event – at Celtic Manor. Picture by GETTY IMAGES

WELSHMAN Jamie Donaldson is relishing the opportunity to tee it up on home soil as Celtic Manor hosts the European Tour for the next two weeks, starting with the Celtic Classic.

Taking place on the Twenty Ten Course, where Europe won back the Ryder Cup in dramatic fashion ten years ago, the Celtic Classic is the fourth event of the six-tournament UK Swing.

The 44-year-old – who was born in Pontypridd, 25 miles from Newport’s Celtic Manor – was the hero of the 2014 Ryder Cup, holeing the winning putt at Gleneagles.

Donaldson said: “I love coming back down here. It’s a great venue and the course is looking really good, and the sun is shining.

“I do love playing here. Normally you get great crowds, which is a shame, given the current circumstances that won’t be happening.

“It’s a special place, beautiful setting and beautiful weather,” Jamie said of the old Wentwood Hills Course which was redesigned to create the Twenty Ten course, which runs through the picturesque Usk valley.

Donaldson added: “I’ve been playing nicely. After the wrist operation things take time and I’ve been working hard to get that right.

“I’m fit as a fiddle. Sometimes things take longer than you think they would.

“I came back last year but never really felt 100 per cent. But now I feel fit, ready to go and look forward to playing this week.

Jamie, who briefly challenged the leaders at Hanbury Manor last weekend, added: “This is more of a ball-strikers golf course. It’ll help the longer hitter.

“It’s good that I can shoot low scores like that still. I’ve been playing well in practice, things are starting to come together.”

Celtic Manor hosted the Wales Open on the Twenty Ten Ryder Cup course from 2008 until 2014. Next week’s Wales Open will be played on the Roman Road course.

Ryder Cup heroes return to Newport

DONALDSON is one of a number of players, who have represented Europe in the biennial contest who will tee it up this week.

Ross Fisher and Edoardo Molinari, teammates in South Wales in 2010 are returning to the site of that famous victory.

Colin Montgomerie’s team’s victory was sealed by Graeme McDowell on the 16^th hole in the anchor match. The event had run into a fourth day because of torrential rain.

Italian Molinari said: “It’s a golf course that I love. I have great memories from the Ryder Cup and the Wales Open – I played here a couple of times.

“It brings back a lot of fantastic memories, playing with Francesco and the whole team, and managing to win that cup by half a point.

“It was a fantastic week. The weather, so far, looks good. Let’s see what the next few days bring us. It’s always a very enjoyable week here.

“I have two memories – the first tee with Francesco on the first day, which still gives me goosebumps 10 years on.

“Then the last few holes in the singles against Rickie Fowler. I remember how busy it was – how many people were watching. I’ve never seen that many people be so loud on a golf course.”

Next week the Wales Open will be played on Celtic Manor’s Roman Road Course, which also hosted the European Tour event from 2005-7 while the old Wentwood Hills was transformed into the new Ryder Cup course.

Nuneaton’s Andy Sullivan notched his first win in nearly five years in the English Championship at Hanbury Manor last week.

Sullivan seeks more success after ending run

LAST week’s English Championship winner Andy Sullivan, who played in Darren Clarke’s team beaten at Hazeltine in 2016, will hope to consolidate his place at the summit of the UK Swing Order of Merit.

Sullivan, who won for the first time in nearly five years in Hertfordshire on Sunday, said: “It’s a long time waiting for that fourth win. I couldn’t be happier.

“Nice to do it in my own country and get back home with the family and celebrate. I’m still on cloud nine, it’s not quite sunk in yet.

“Florence was elated, bless her, it was my first win with her,” Andy said about his fiancé. “She was over the moon and it was good to see a proper smile on her face.

“Before lockdown I felt I was playing really, really well. I just felt that my attitude wasn’t there. My head wasn’t in the space to win a golf tournament, or compete in a tournament.

“There was a lot of self-reflection over lockdown. I opened up to my team about a lot of hings personally and golf-wise.

“Talked through it and came out with a plan to get my way to being happy and smiley on the golf course – and being competitive.

“I didn’t think it would happen so quickly. To come out and be competitive at the British Masters and then win the third event. It’s amazing and reinforces what we’re doing as a team.”

The top 10 not already exempt after next week’s ISPS Handa Wales Open will earn a place at the US Open, at Winged Foot.

Those finishing inside the top 10 after the sixth and final event – the ISPS Handa UK Championship – will also earn a share of £250,000 to donate to charities of their choice.

•To follow live scoring in the first round of the Celtic Championship click here.

The post Jamie Donaldson happy to be home at Celtic Manor for UK Swing’s Celtic Championshi appeared first on Golf North.

Bairstow only second Yorkshireman to win Hampshire Salver

Andrew Griffin — Wed, 17 Apr 2019 15:07:09 +0000

Hallowes’ Sam Bairstow is just the second Yorkshireman to claim the Hampshire Salver for the best 72-hole score in the Hampshire Hog and the Selborne Salver. Picture by ANDREW GRIFFIN / AMG Pictures

HALLOWES GC’s Sam Bairstow prevented Jake Bolton from becoming the second Wiltshire winner of the Hampshire Savler in six years at North Hants Golf Club.

The Yorkshire amateur took the prize on countback after finishing third in the Hampshire Hog on Sunday, courtesy of an excellent 65.

His four-under round after lunch was only bettered by Hog winner Matty Lamb (Hexham), who broke the course record with a superb 63, and Hampshire’s Darren Wright, who fired a 64 in his first competitive weekend of golf since quitting professional golf two years ago.

Bairstow, who lost in the final of last year’s Yorkshire Amateur Championship, started from the 10th playing in the group behind Lamb.

His approach to the 12th hit the flag before settling some eight feet from the pin, before getting up and down from the bunker for birdie at the par five 17th. He sank a 20-footer for a three at the 18th to get to three-under at the turn.

His hopes of becoming just the second Yorkshire player to win the Hampshire Hog in its 63-year history after Jon Lupton in 2001 after bogeys at the first and third.

But he bounced back brilliantly with three birdies in a row – holing a six-footer at the fourth, before canning a 30-footer at the next and then picking up another from just two feet after missing his eagle putt on the 377-yard downhill sixth, which the top players were all taking a shy at.

Three pars to finish left him two adrift of Lamb on three-under but edged out Whittington Heath’s Ryan Brooks of third place on countback after the latter carded 68 and 67.

Ironically, Bairstow carded a one-over par 70 in the morning at the course where Justin Rose famously won the Hog as a 14-year-old in 1995 – and took the Salver for the best aggregate in the Selborne Salver two years later – and 70, 65 were the same scores Sam posted at Blackmoor 24 hours earlier.

Bolton had lost a play-off to Sussex’s Charlie Strickland to win the Selborne Salver on Saturday, with two 67s, and shot a 66 on Sunday afternoon to go with his one-over par 70 before lunch.

That left Bolton and Bairstow tied on six-under on the Hampshire Salver leaderboard.

But that extra shot in the fourth round ultimately counted against him, and prevented him from joining Bowood’s European Tour winner Jordan Smith as a fellow Wiltshire winner.

Lamb had to settle for third place in the Hampshire Salver as he missed out on becoming the eighth player to have landed the Hampshire Hog and Salver double since the 72-hole prize was introduced in 1979.

Bairstow joins the likes of Sand Moor pair Simon Dyson and Ben Mason, who won back-to-back after Rose’s success in the Hampshire Salver in the late 1990s.

Former English Amateur winner Stuart Cage, who now helps manage Hampshire’s former British Amateur Champion Scott Gregory on the Euorpean Tour for the Octagon group, was the first Yorkshire winner in 1992 – 13 years after Peter McEvoy became the first-ever winner of the 72-hole competition, which is one of only two club strokeplay events in the UK that earn points in the Official World Amateur Rankings.

Past winners of the Hampshire Salver also include Ross Fisher (2004), Callum Shinkwin (2013), Smith (2014) and Jack Singh Brar (2017), who are all now playing on the European Tour.

Ryder Cup player Andrew Sullivan, who is a member at Nuneaton GC, is the only player to win the trophy twice – picking it up in 2010 and 2011.

European team-mate Matt Fitzpatrick missed out by a shot in 2012, 24 hours after claiming the Selborne Salver.

Andrew Sullivan (left) the 2011 Hampshire Salver winner. Picture by ANDREW GRIFFIN / AMG Pictures

It is 14 years since a Hampshire player last claimed the Salver – Stoneham’s Ryan Henley, who won at Blackmoor that year, when he also won the county championship at the East Hampshire heathland course which celebrated its centenary that year.

Hampshire did claim the Salver three years in a row in the mid 1990s – Hayling’s Mark Treleaven winning it in 1995, followed by Sandford Springs’ James Knight a year later before Rose completed the hat-trick, having finished runner-up in the Hog to Gary Wolstenholme, England’s most capped international, who is now playing on the European Seniors Tour.

Aldershot-based Army Golf Club member Ian Gray was the first Hampshire winner to claim the trophy back in 1982, having won the Hog – he returned home to defend both titles 12 months later having spent six of them stationed at Port Stanley in the Falkland Islands.

He had arrived home having not played a single round while based down in the South Atlantic.

Former Hampshire captain Martin Young is the host county’s only other winner of the Hampshire Salver in 2000 – a year when rain redcued the Selborne Salver to 18 holes, allowing the Brokenhurst Manor man to take the trophy after being in contention at both Blackmoor and North Hants.

The post Bairstow only second Yorkshireman to win Hampshire Salver appeared first on Golf North.