Excellent Swedish team crush Irish hopes

IRELAND suffered a huge let-down in the European Mens Amateur Team Golf Championship over the Royal Hague course in The Netherlands yesterday when they crashed out of contention, beaten by an in-form Swedish side.

Having topped the qualifiers by the proverbial mile 11 strokes Ireland were very hopeful that they could clinch the title for the first time for 16 years but their hopes evaporated quickly as they were soon in trouble in the two foursome matches.

Playing in the first game Walker Cup hopeful Justin Kehoe and newcomer Brian McElhinney battled bravely against Par Nilsson and Kalle Edbeg but in the end went down by 2&1.

A big disappointment was the fact that Colm Moriarty and Gareth Maybin being outplayed by Steven Jeppesen and Niklas Lemke and they crashed to a 6&4 reverse. As always in European competition to come back from two down after the foursomes is a monumental task and although the Irish showed characteristic fighting qualities, they were never really going to peg back the Swedes.

In the end there were just two Irish winners McElhinney, who has enjoyed a great championship for his debut, and Moriarty, who was very impressive in beating Jeppesen by 3&2.

Moriarty, from Athlone, was five under par and six up at the turn before Jeppesen took the 10th with a par and birdied both the 12th and 15th to bring it back to three but that was as close as he got.

McElhinney, a member of the North West club, was always in front after taking the lead at the opening hole and he established a two hole advantage by the l0th and held on for a 2&1 victory over Lemke one of Sweden's top players.

Noel Fox, Gareth Maybin and Justin Kehoe all bit the dust as Ireland went down 5-2. "Of course it's disappointing, but that's match play. The fact that we led the qualifiers by 11 strokes counted for nothing today and we can have no grumbles as Sweden were the better side," said Irish captain Mark Gannon.

The best Ireland can now finish in these championships is fifth and today they face Wales. In the semi-finals of the championship proper, England, whose last title success was 12 year's ago in Madrid, take on France while Spain play Sweden.

The survivors meet tomorrow to decide the 2003 champions.