Patrick Curran (Edmondstown) was one of those to take advantage. Six birdies helped him to a superb three-under 69, moving him to within two shots of the lead heading into the final round.<\/p>\n
Playing in the penultimate two-ball alongside James Hewitt (Tandragee), Curran made a blistering start to the afternoon. An eagle on the Par 5 second applied early pressure to the leader. With Keating opening with a bogey in the group behind, Curran quickly moved into the lead as he followed up with a birdie on 3.<\/p>\n
Keating\u2019s challenge suffered a further setback with a triple bogey at 4 and a double at 7, while Curran continued to look composed at the top of the leaderboard.<\/p>\n
\u201cI put it in the Dunluce Lodge off seven and then hit my next one left and then missed a short one,\u201d said Keating.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just had to stay patient. I knew there was going to be some chances coming up.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Seapoint golfer took those chances with birdies at 9, 11 and 12 helping him battle back into contention as he closed the gap on Curran.<\/p>\n
The pair were tied at two-under thru 15 holes, having separated themselves from the chasing pack as the championship headed towards a dramatic finish.<\/p>\n
Calamity Corner once again lived up to its name when Curran bogeyed the Par 3 16th to drop back to one-under. Moments later, Keating produced the decisive moment of the championship, driving the green at 17 before converting his birdie putt to retake the outright lead.<\/p>\n
A closing par at the 18th would see Keating finish at two-under-par to secure the biggest victory of his amateur career, completing a remarkable turnaround having suffered two heavy blows early in the final round.<\/p>\n
\u201cI remembered how I was down the stretch in the scratch cup here to birdie the last and win,\u201d said Keating.<\/p>\n
\u201cI trusted myself and my coach Shane reminded me that I won a lot of Boys\u2019 tournaments and I was great down the stretch. I leaned on that and reminded myself that going down the stretch I can make a couple of birdies and clutch up to get the win. I\u2019ve done that today and I\u2019m really proud of myself.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Patrick Curran (Edmondstown) was one of those to take advantage. Six birdies helped him to a superb three-under…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":450944,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-450943","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ireland","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450943","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=450943"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/450943\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/450944"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=450943"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=450943"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=450943"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}