MacIntyre shows fight as Hatton wins under lights

IF he keeps racking up the pounds, euros and dollars at this rate,

Robert MacIntyre may be tempted to open up his own building society on the Oban high street.

While disappointed to miss out on a six-man play-off for the whopping $2m first prize here in the Turkish Airlines Open at the Montgomerie Maxx Royal, MacIntyre’s spirited efforts as a rookie on the European Tour continue to generate the kind of huge interest that would even please the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

On a day when he wasn’t at his best – “I played terribly” – the 23-year-old managed to do the thing the best golfers do: winkle out a decent score from the scraps of an untidy round.

Two shots off the pace heading into the final round, MacIntyre’s battling three-under 69 for an 18-under aggregate left him two shots outside an epic sudden-death shoot-out featuring half a dozen men from which Englishman

Tyrrell Hatton eventually emerged triumphant.

It was a good job the Maxx Royal resort had a floodlit back nine. It took an extra four holes to get a winner after Hatton, Matthias Schwab, Kurt Kitayama, Eric Van Rooyen, Victor Perez and Benjamin Hebert all finished tied on 20-under.

Hatton and Schwab were the last men standing as darkness fell but, under the lights, Hatton grabbed the glory as Schwab missed a putt of three feet to keep the play-off going

For MacIntyre, fresh from a top-20 on his debut in a WGC event in China last week, this was another mightily impressive and profitable week as he added £126,000 to his vast earnings which are well into millionaire territory.

The money is nice. Getting the win he craves, however, would be even nicer. “That would give me the few years exemption,” he said. “I’m playing unbelievably well. It’s more consistent than I ever thought I could get.

“My golf as an amateur was up and down. I’d either miss the cut or challenge for the title. It was the same on the Challenge Tour. But for me to throw in rounds like this when I’m playing poorly is more satisfying than playing well.

“I played terribly today, it’s as simple as that; I didn’t have a good warm up, I struggled a bit but we’ll take this finish. I putted superbly today. If the putter wasn’t there it was a 77 or 76.

“But it was there and to walk out of there three-under, I’m sure the boys I was playing with would have been shocked that I got it round in that. But that’s where my golf is at the moment. I’m flying high.”

On a busy, bustling final day that featured such a log-jam, the leaderboard was just about appearing in the local traffic updates on the radio, MacIntyre put his troubles on the practice range behind him and made an early statement with two birdies on his opening three holes. A trip into the water on the fourth, however, was a real scunner.

“I just mis-hit it,” he said of that costly venture into the wet stuff which ended up with a bogey. “I caught it heavy. It was just a bad shot and that stalled all the momentum. If I got going there then we were on to something but these