Ladies European Tour<\/a> \u2013 claimed a share of fifth position, three shots behind pacesetter Anna Huang.<\/p>\nDonegan, who has a best finish of tied-16th in the Ford New South Wales Open so far in her maiden season on the LET, where she is currently 86th\u00a0on the order of merit, had only 24 putts in a strong first round at the London tournament. She recovered from a double-bogey seven on the 15th, her seventh hole, to card a hat-trick of birdies on the 17th, 18th\u00a0and first holes.<\/p>\n
Canadian teenager Huang, already a three-time winner on the LET, posted a 67 for a one-stroke lead over Australian Kelsey Bennett and Austrian Emma Spitz.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt started out pretty good and then I chipped in on my third hole for a good par save and I think that just really brought the momentum going out. My putting was really good and then I was hitting all the fairways,\u201d said Huang.<\/p>\n
Donegan \u2013 in a seven-way tie for fifth alongside\u00a0Sweden\u2019s Louise Rydqvist, Singapore\u2019s Shannon Tan, German pair Olivia Cowan and Aline Krauter, Italian duo Alessia Nobilio and Anna Zanusso \u2013\u00a0\u00a0led the Irish challenge with Anna Foster signing for an opening level-par 73 in tied-32nd\u00a0and Sara Byrne opening with a 75 in tied-54th.<\/p>\n
In the Scottish Challenge on the HotelPlanner Tour, Galwayman Liam Nolan shot a fine opening round of 64 at the Roxburghe club to claim a share of second place behind Portugal\u2019s Tomas Gouveia who posted a 61 to assume the lead.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, Ireland\u2019s women remained on course to retain their Hugh C Kelly Trophy in the R&A Home Internationals at Woodbrook, after following up their opening day win over Scotland with a 5 \u00bd to 3 \u00bd success over Wales on day two to set up a winner takes all final day showdown with England.<\/p>\n
England, however, are favourites to win the R&A Trophy for the combined men\u2019s and women\u2019s championship after Ireland\u2019s men lost to Scotland while England are also in control of the men\u2019s event for the Raymond Trophy after making it two wins from two with victory over Wales.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s women took the morning foursomes by a 2 \u00bd to \u00bd margin over the Scots \u2013 with Katie Poots\/Kate Dillon and Emma Fleming\/Anna Abom winning and Rebekah Garnder\/Olivia Costello halving \u2013 and then Poots, Gardner and Fleming winning their singles to secure victory.<\/p>\n
Ireland\u2019s men lost to Scotland by a margin of 7-5 which meant the combined match was halved, leaving the door slightly ajar for Ireland headed into the final day, but needing to secure wins over England with the three pieces of silverware on the line.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00c1ine Donegan produced an excellent opening round of three-under-par 70 to move into contention in the $2 million…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":452541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[39],"tags":[5904,154764,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-729804","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\/729804","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=729804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/729804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/452541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=729804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=729804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=729804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}