Defending champion David Howard opened with a two-over 74 but he wasn\u2019t too concerned to be seven shots off the pace in the East of Ireland Men\u2019s Amateur Open at County Louth.<\/p>\n
The 27-year-old Fota Island man was tied for 25th in the 132-man field behind Galgorm Castle\u2019s Joshua Hill, who fired a five-under 67 to lead the Arnotts-sponsored classic by three strokes from Louth\u2019s Stuart Grehan, Seapoint\u2019s recently-crowned North of Ireland champion Dylan Keating, Lahinch\u2019s reigning South of Ireland champion Jonathan Keane and Norway\u2019s Nicolai Rosl.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe rough is up and the wind is up,\u201d said the Cork man, who made two of his four bogeys by driving into fairway bunkers.<\/p>\n
\u201cI drove it very well last year, so the plan is to find the short grass, make a few putts, and see where that takes us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Howard does not expect a low winning score at Baltray, where South Alabama University-based Irish international Hill, 22, made six birdies and a bogey in a stiff westerly wind to set the pace.<\/p>\n
The Ballymena star, who won the Mullingar Scratch Trophy in 2022, birdied the second and third and followed a bogey at the fifth with birdies at the sixth, 12th, 14th and 17th to take a clear lead on a day when just seven players broke par.<\/p>\n
With thick rough making Baltray a tough test in 25 mph gusts, faces stiff competition from a quality chasing pack that includes 2015 winner Grehan and fellow Walker Cup star Gavin Tiernan from the host club, who shot 71 to share sixth with Royal Dublin\u2019s Jack McDonnell.<\/p>\n
Another former Walker Cup player, Dundalk\u2019s Caolan Rafferty, was lurking in the group on level par.<\/p>\n
\u201cI probably left a good few out there to be perfectly honest, but I played really nice golf,\u201d said Grehan, who birdied the second, fourth and sixth before dropping his lone shot after being forced to hack out from the rough at the 11th. \u201cI had a load of chances coming in that I didn’t really take advantage of, but look, I’m playing pretty well, so I’m pretty pleased.\u201d<\/p>\n
Grehan won the \u201cEast\u201d in 2015 and with the Walker Cup at Lahinch on his mind, he\u2019s keen to add another trophy to a collection that includes last year\u2019s Irish Amateur Close and Irish Amateur Open titles and the 2015 South of Ireland.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you’ve been there and done that, yeah, it does take a little bit of heat off, but I still want to go out there and try and do it again,\u201d Grehan said.<\/p>\n
\u201cMy head’s in a good place, so I\u2019m looking forward to the next couple of days.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Defending champion David Howard opened with a two-over 74 but he wasn\u2019t too concerned to be seven shots…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":473673,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[61,60,43],"class_list":["post-473672","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\/473672","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=473672"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/473672\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/473673"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=473672"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=473672"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=473672"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}