Ballybunion win Irish Junior Cup...again
BALLYBUNION landed the Irish Junior Cup for the second time in five years at Carton House on Thursday last after an exciting final which at one stage they looked like losing before a dramatic turnaround in the last match.
They were dealt a severe blow before they ever travelled to Kildare, losing 14-year old James O’Callaghan through injury, when the youngster (who had won all six of his matches up to the semi-final stage) broke a bone in his foot during PE class at school and was ruled out. However, his replacement Adrian Walsh (a member of the club’s victorious Jimmy Bruen team in 2015) proved to be an able deputy, winning both of his matches at a very wet Carton House.
In Wednesday’s semi-final, Ballybunion took on Loughrea from Galway and were straight out of the blocks claiming the first match where sixteen-year-old Phillip Byrne Junior put the first point on the board with a two-hole win in the top match against Padraig Hynes.
Loughrea hit back to level the match as Evan O’Doherty beat Frank Geary by 3/1 but eighteen-year-old Ronan Cross put Ballybunion 2-1 ahead with a comprehensive 4/3 victory over Paddy McMahon in match number three.
Ballybunion needed just one more point to reach the final but the fourth match involving Adrian Walsh and Loughrea’s David Byrnes finished all-square after 18 as did the fifth match between Brian Slattery and Brendan Dunne, meaning both games had to go to sudden death.
The nineteenth was halved in the fourth match but Walsh, a Ballylongford native (whose sister represented Sydney in this year’s Rose of Tralee) became the Ballybunion hero as he took the next hole to send his side through to Thursday’s final against Grange from Dublin who beat Malone from Belfast in the other semi-final.
Ballybunion were always playing catch up in Thursday’s final as the Dublin side got off to the better start and looked like they had the title in the bag at one stage.
Teenagers Byrne and Cross were in trouble from the off in matches one and three where Byrne found himself two down early on against Kevin O’Meara and at the turn the Grange man had increased his lead to four holes before eventually winning 6/5, while Cross found himself three down after five and five down after nine before eventually losing to Graeme MacDonnell by 7/5.
Grange now had two games in the bag early on and were cruising in match five where Jack Ward was three up on Brian Slattery after eight and the title looked like it was heading to Dublin.
Ballybunion kept grinding away however, with Frank Geary (a survivor from the 2013 win) taking an early two-hole lead over Paul McNiff in match number two, which he maintained throughout before winning 3/2 to give the Kerry club their first point and Adrian Walsh who was always in command against Niall McCormick added a second point taking match four by 3/2.
So, the outcome depended on the final game where Jack Ward (as previously mentioned) held a three-hole lead over Brian Slattery over eight holes.
Slattery however holed a decent putt to win the ninth and finding his confidence, he then won the tenth and the thirteenth to level the match.
The momentum was now with Ballybunion and he holed another great putt to win the fourteenth, taking the lead for the first time, a lead he increased to two at the sixteenth.
A half on one of the final two holes was required for victory but the drama was only beginning, as he hit a very poor tee shot on the par five seventeenth into very heavy rough.
They say there’s a moment in every golfing event that determines the outcome and Ballybunion’s may have come when one of their supporters found the ball with literally a minute left of the allocated search time.
Slattery managed to hack out sideways but it hit his opponents caddy car before coming to rest on the fairway.
He then hit a fairway wood to within one hundred yards of the green as did his opponent from a similar distance but both men saw their next shots hit the green and spin back off the front edge.
Ward then hit a superb pitch leaving himself a four-foot putt for par as Slattery away pulled out the wedge.
His father Brendan was on the bag and advised Brian to play the putter instead saying, “At least make him putt”.
Slattery junior went with Dad’s advice and to the delight of the huge Ballybunion contingent, he holed it from all of one hundred feet for par to clinch the match and the title amid ecstatic scenes, bringing down the curtain on a very successful year for the North Kerry club.