Lawrie and O’Sullivan finish with a flourish

IT has been another wonderful weekend for Irish golfers Peter Lawrie and Denis O’Sullivan. Lawrie made sure of his card on the main European Tour for next year, while O’Sullivan claimed his fifth title on the European Seniors circuit.

The pressure was very much on 28-year-old Dubliner Lawrie when he travelled to Van Nymegen Golf Club in the Netherlands for the Fortis Bank Challenge Open on the European Challenge Tour. He was standing 12th in the order of merit knowing that a good performance would copperfasten his place among the top 15 who automatically go on to clinch cards on the regular circuit in 2003.

Lawrie made no mistake as he shot rounds of 69, 68, 69 and 66 to finish 16 under par in a tie for 2nd, a couple of strokes behind Belgian winner

Didier de Voogt. Accordingly, he improved to 8th on the Challenge tour order of merit with a total of 54,812 and it would take an extraordinary series of events to deprive him of that coveted card when the final event of the season, the Challenge Tour Grand final, takes place at Golf du Medoc, Bordeaux, this week.

The tournament boasts a total prize fund of $200,000. Lawrie will be there, of course, along with Wexford club professional, Damien McGrane, who still has an outside chance of crashing the top 15. He is currently 24th with 35,754, a little over 9,000 adrift of de Voogt in 16th place.

Kilkenny’s Gary Murphy is 29th with 29,406 and would probably need to win in France to regain the card he held on the main tour in 2000. For the slimline Lawrie (he stands six feet and weighs 11 stone), though, it’s now plain sailing and he will be teeing it up next season alongside five other Irishmen, Pádraig Harrington, Darren Clarke, Paul McGinley, Graeme McDowell and Des Smyth. He has been travelling a long and difficult road since turning professional in 1997, having captured the Irish Close Championship in 1996 by defeating Garth McGimpsey in the final at Royal Co Down. He fought hard to get on the regular circuit, but struggled to stay on the Challenge Tour, finishing 78th, 79th and 58th from ’99 through to ’01. Lawrie, a commerce graduate from UCD, remained patient and has now had his reward. Meanwhile, Denis O’Sullivan set himself up for another royal conclusion to his season on the European Seniors Tour when he captured the Tunisian Open at Port El Kantaoui. It will be recalled how the big Corkman finished the 2000 campaign with victories in successive weeks in the Senior Tournament of Champions and the Abu Dhabi Tour Championship. He followed that up last year with wins in the Palmerston Trophy in Berlin and the Scandinavian International.

Considering that he reached the semi-final of the Seniors Match Play Championship in Spain a couple of weeks ago (when he was desperately unlucky to lose to fellow Irishman Eddie Polland), O’Sullivan is obviously in great form at present and accordingly will travel to this week’s Estoril Seniors Tour Championship Quinta da Marina in Portugal with his confidence sky high and intent on claiming a second title for the third successive year.

O’Sullivan has been a professional since 1998 and his victory in Tunisia brought him to 7th in the order of merit with 123, 091. Furthermore, he is now 11th in the seniors career earnings with a total of €555,562, a magnificent achievement for a man who was a career amateur until his 50th birthday but who has adjusted superbly to life in the paid ranks.

Among those he has already left in his wake are Maurice Bembridge, Antonio Garrido, Bob Charles, Bob Shearer, Liam Higgins (€377,386), Christy O’Connor Junior (€376,924) and Bernard Gallacher.