Ireland’s \u00c1ine Donegan is top of the leaderboard at the halfway point of in the Ford Women’s NSW Open near Sydney, after shooting a sizzling second-round 63 to move to 11-under-par.<\/p>\n
It’s the 23-year-old Ennis native’s professional debut on the Ladies European Tour and she is making a serious impact.<\/p>\n
After carding a three-under 68 in her opening round, Donegan exploded at Wollongong links to surge up the field, flourishing in the challenging conditions.<\/p>\n
She picked up seven birdies and an eagle in a superb eight-under-par round of 63 that left her two clear of Australian Sarah Kemp in second place.<\/p>\n
Dubliner Anna Foster also had a strong day at the office, a four-under 67 lifting her to three-under overall in a tie for 11th.<\/p>\n
“The weather felt a bit more like home, which I knew would come to my advantage a little bit,” Donegan said afterwards.<\/p>\n
“I knew some people would struggle in the wind and the rain. I knew that if I just kind of kept the ball in front of me, especially off the tee on this course, you can kind of attack pins and stuff like that.<\/p>\n
“It was obviously a dream day. I\u2019m a little bit disappointed to finish my second last hole with a bogey, but looking forward to the weekend and yeah, delighted with the start.”<\/p>\n
Donegan secured her Ladies European Tour card for 2026 last December after coming through Lalla Aicha Q-school in Morocco.<\/p>\n
She first shot to prominence in 2023 when she sat just one shot off the lead at the US Open after the first round, eventually finishing 45th at Pebble Beach.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland’s \u00c1ine Donegan is top of the leaderboard at the halfway point of in the Ford Women’s NSW…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320411,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-320410","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320410","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320410"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320410\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}