Ireland’s Stuart Grehan is the 2026 Amateur Championship winner following a 1UP win over world number one Matt Moloney of the USA in Royal Liverpool on Saturday.<\/p>\n
The Offaly golfer overcame a late round blip to edge past his American opponent on the 36th and final hole of the two round finale.<\/p>\n
With the win, Grehan secured qualification for the Open Championship at Royal Birkdale next month, and an invite to the 2027 Masters and US Open.<\/p>\n
It was the American who started the brighter under the Merseyside sunshine. Moloney played a flawless opening nine of one-under-par, with no bogeys on the card to take a 2UP lead at the halfway stage of the first round.<\/p>\n
Grehan’s bogeys on holes three and five and a double on the 12th saw him go three down against the number one seed, with ominous signs growing.<\/p>\n
The Offaly man responded with a flourish however, carding birdies on 13 and 16, and winning the 14th with a par to level up the tie as the players approached the halfway point.<\/p>\n
American Moloney birdied the par four 18th to take a slender 1UP advantage as the players headed for a gentle break.<\/p>\n
The lead was short lived however with Grehan going in front on the 20th hole, before both players traded the share of the lead over the next two holes.<\/p>\n
The first hammer blow of the round came from the County Louth based golfer at the par five eighth hole, his 26th.<\/p>\n
With Moloney already in for birdie, Grehan responded with an eagle to edge back in front, before taking a 2UP advantage with eight to play, following a par on the tenth hole.<\/p>\n
Two more pars followed, then the competitors traded birdies on the par five 14th hole, meaning Grehan maintained his lead heading down the home straight.<\/p>\n
A costly three-putt bogey by Moloney on the tricky par three 15th placed one Irish hand on the trophy, with Grehan 3UP with three holes to play.<\/p>\n
The Offaly golfer lost the 16th and 17th holes, narrowly missing putts that would have sealed the title; but finished with a routine par to get the job done.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland’s Stuart Grehan is the 2026 Amateur Championship winner following a 1UP win over world number one Matt…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":509923,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[61,60,112],"class_list":["post-509922","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\/509922","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=509922"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/509922\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/509923"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=509922"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=509922"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=509922"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}