Lucky escape for Irish golfing quartet after Austrian crash

FOUR budding Irish professional golfers narrowly cheated death in a car smash as they prepared for a mini tour event in Austria.

Former Irish amateur internationals Dara Lernihan (Castle), Brendan McCarroll (Ballyliffin), Richard Kilpatrick (Banbridge) and Gareth Shaw (Lurgan) were driving to practice for this week’s Alps Tour event when their hire car collided head on with a motorbike on a twisting mountain road. Miraculously, they walked away from the crash with nothing more than cuts and bruises and while shaken by the experience, they hope to tee it up in the 54-hole Gosser Open at Golf club Erzherzog Johann tomorrow.

“We were going around a corner when a motorbike overtook another motorbike on the far side of the road,” said 24-year old Dubliner Lernihan.