Golf Vic Vol 60 No 1

Fist pumping was the order of the day for Irishman Conor Purcell and South Korean Amy Hong after their Australian Amateur

victories at Woodlands.

Their match had ebbed and flowed all afternoon on the tight fairways and quirky, little greens of Woodlands but Purcell looked to dominate when he went four-up through 26 holes. Then the match turned; the Irishman had a birdie putt to go five- up at the 27th hole, the par-four ninth on the course, but promptly three-whacked it and gifted the NSW player the hole. By the time they reached the par-three 17th tee for the 35th hole of the final, Barbieri had clawed back to two-down, but he was at breaking point. Still he chose to fight. With his family in the crowd having driven the 10 hours from Sydney overnight, he hit a beautiful iron shot that narrowly cleared the front trap and came to rest just more than a metre from the stick. A birdie, a fist pump (not to mention a guttural roar from his father and self- confessed “hacker” Ernie, who had introduced Barbieri to the game at the age of 13), and he was only one-down with one to play. Then at the par-five 18th, after a murdered drive by Barbieri, a wobbly Purcell flared his tee shot wide right and into deep rough.

shed tears as he talked his way through his incredibly near miss in the national championship. All the emotions were on display on a day of sensational amateur golf with an international flavour. Yet perhaps the biggest story of the week came on the first day of matchplay when the top-ranked Australian man, Victoria’s David Micheluzzi, lost to the 64th seeded Harrison Crowe, having utterly dominated the strokeplay section with rounds of 63 at Spring Valley and 64 at Woodlands. The quick departure of the world’s number-eight ranked amateur player blew the men’s section of the Australian Amateur wide open. Purcell, a Dubliner who came to Melbourne for the championships out of desperation for some golf in the midst of an Irish winter, won the men’s final when the 21-year-old Barbieri, from the north- west Sydney suburb of Ryde and playing out of Monash Golf Club, made his fatal, final error.

Conor Purcell raised his arms in the air in triumph as he walked back down the first hole at Woodlands after his 37th- hole triumph in the Australian Amateur Championship. Surrounded by Irish supporters about to mark the 21-year-old’s biggest win, Purcell savoured the moment. “Get me a whiskey,’’ he said, and no one could have denied him a tipple. It had been a long day at Woodlands, notably for Purcell and Sydney’s Nathan Barbieri, the men’s finalists, but also for Yae-Eun (Amy) Hong, the 16-year-old South Korean who had conjured a remarkable chip-in to win the women’s final at the 34th hole almost an hour earlier. Hong’s father Tae-Sik, a former professional player himself and her caddie for the week, had convinced her to punch her chip into the bank behind the 16th green so that the ball’s momentum was stunned, allowing it to trickle up on to the green. It was a masterstroke in every way. Back at the clubhouse, Barbieri, a polite young man who had fought so doggedly to prolong the agony of the men’s final,

20 Golf Victoria