Irish seniors battle in testing conditions to stay in title hunt

CHAMPIONS Ireland are ideally poised to figure among the leading four countries who will remain in contention for the European Seniors Amateur Championship after today’s second round at Shannon Golf Club.

Arthur Pierse, the former Walker Cup player from Tipperary, shot a splendid round of 74 yesterday in spite of dropping four shots in three holes midway through his second nine. And with the rest of the Irish side performing consistently, home team captain Tommie Basquill was quietly confident that they would remain in contention for a second successive title going into tomorrow’s match play rounds.

Unfortunately, atrocious weather stretching from the starting time of 7.30am until 3.30pm or so threatened to derail the tournament altogether. In spite of the best efforts of the Shannon ground staff, play was suspended for almost two hours in mid-morning as greens, fairways and bunkers flooded. Preferred lies were in operation and three bunkers had to be declared ground under repair but all were loud in their praise of the manner in which the Shannon staff coped with the deluge.