Fairytale for Bland as Scots miss opportunity
IF you thought Paisley Road West was busy yesterday, you should have seen the congestion on the leaderboard at the Betfred British Masters.
Robert MacIntyre and Calum Hill were both striving to break out of the log-jam as they lurked just a stroke off the lead heading into the final round at The Belfry. In the end, though, the Scottish duo were left to reflect on what might have been as they both posted one-under 71s for 10-under totals to share eighth, three shots outside a play-off that led to English veteran Richard Bland edging out Italian youngster Guido Migliozzi.
There may not have been a fairytale finish for the Scots but there was for Bland. At the age of 48, and in his 25th year as a professional, he won his first European Tour title in his 478th event on the circuit as his unwavering perseverance was rewarded at last. It was a delightful sporting story. It was an emotional one too.
“Are you okay mum?” Bland said on a video call to his parents in the immediate aftermath of his triumph.
“No,” she gasped in tearful, relieved jubilation. Her boy had finally made it. He had certainly earned it.
Bland had dropped just one shot all week and holed a brave 30-footer for birdie on the 18th in a 66 to set the clubhouse target. Migliozzi became his main threat but the 24-yearold had to make a daring par on the last to tie.
Migliozzi then three-putted the first play-off hole, however, and Bland held his nerve to knock in a three-footer for his par and become the oldest first-time winner on the tour.
“It’s what I’ve worked for, for 20 years,” said Bland. “I’ve had a few close calls and I assume someone up there was looking down on me quite favourably today. Who knows? Maybe it’s like buses. None come around for ages and then two come along in quick succession.”
At one stage of a ding-dong afternoon over the famed Brabazon course, there were 19 players within three shots of the lead. You just about needed the Jaws of Life to prise them all apart.
In the early elbowing and jockeying of the close quarters cut-and-thrust, MacIntyre and Hill mounted offensives and they both picked up birdies at the second and third.
Those initial gains had hoisted MacIntyre into the lead and he came agonisingly close to making a hugely significant move on the par-3 seventh. His tee-shot went in like an arrow, hit the top of the pin, nearly dropped in the hole but, instead, ricocheted out and off the green. In fact, it almost trundled into the water. As Jack Nicklaus used to say, “golf is not, and never has been, a fair game”.
MacIntyre’s response to that unlucky break was a tad more colourful.
“Some days you are the dog and some days you are the lamp post,” he said.
MacIntyre, the world No.45, salvaged his par there with a good up-and-down from a tricky spot but his challenge would unravel around the turn. After a three-putt bogey on the ninth, MacIntyre hoiked his drive on the treacherous 10th on to the slope before knifing his awkward chip to the green into the bunker. Another bogey ensued and the challenge was fading.
His raking birdie putt from over 30-feet on the last was greeted with a wry grin. It was too little, too late.
“Just the little things didn’t go for me,” said MacIntyre, who heads to this week’s US PGA Championship in good fettle. “I’m hitting it great, I’m playing great. I just need a bit of luck.”
Hill was also in the thick of it after a couple of early gains but a spilled shot on 11 and a crippling double-bogey on the 13th put paid to his ambitions of a maiden tour triumph.
It was Bland who realised that ambition.