Ireland\u2019s Beth Coulter birdied the first sudden-death playoff hole to win the Women\u2019s Irish Challenge on her professional debut.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-old Co Down golfer pipped South Korea\u2019s Ayeon Yang on home soil on the LET Access Series (LETAS) to highlight her potential after a successful amateur career which saw her make the Curtis Cup twice.<\/p>\n
Coulter shot a two-under-par final round of 70 to finish on five under, before hitting a superb second shot on the first playoff hole at the par-5 18th to inside 20 feet. She then two-putted for birdie while Yang made bogey.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s pretty surreal,\u201d Coulter said after becoming the first Irish golfer to win on their professional debut.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt probably hasn\u2019t sunk in yet. This was the goal at the start of the week, and to actually do it is pretty crazy. I haven\u2019t won in a while, so it\u2019s kind of nice to get back into the winner\u2019s circle again. To do it on my pro debut is really, really special.\u201d<\/p>\n
Coulter had started the day one shot behind overnight leader Michaela Vavrova, who slumped to a six-over 78 to finish tied-16th.<\/p>\n
The top seven players on the LETAS Order of Merit at the end of the season secure a full Ladies European Tour card for the following year, while players finishing between eighth and 32nd will be exempt to the final stage of LET Q-School, with Coulter taking a big step in the quest for that card.<\/p>\n
The LETAS season resumes next week in Himmerland, Denmark, at the CSK Steel Women\u2019s Open.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ireland\u2019s Beth Coulter birdied the first sudden-death playoff hole to win the Women\u2019s Irish Challenge on her professional…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":721691,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,154764,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-721690","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-golf","tag-golf","tag-ladies-european-tour","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721690","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=721690"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/721690\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/721691"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=721690"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=721690"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=721690"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}