Fox down on his luck with putting problems

Ireland's Noel Fox continued to suffer from the putting problems which had troubled him over the three days when he closed with a 73 for a level par four round total of 284 in the Lytham Trophy yesterday.

He trailed by a massive margin of 19 strokes behind runaway winner James Heath, of Surrey, who shredded the tournament record.

Fox, the 30-year-old Walker Cup player from Portmarnock, was so concerned over his ineptitude on the greens that he intends to spend the next few days trying to sort himself out before this weekend's Irish Amateur Championship on the new Colin Montgomerie course at Carton House near Dublin.