The Pitch & Putt season beyond club level officially ended last Saturday with the staging of a novel Inter-Provincial Ryder Cup style match between the Top 12 ranked Mens players for both Munster and Leinster last Saturday at the McDonagh course in Kildare.
As Irish No 1 Damien Fleming of Deerpark was part of the Munster side while Tralee’s Jason Cregan also forced his way into the Irish Top 20 this year courtesy of his Munster Senior Mens Matchplay win in Tralee back in May. Both were part of an eventual 10.5 to 7.5 defeat for the southern province over their Leinster counterparts but both contributed points to Munster’s score on the day.
In the opening Scotch Foursomes matches Damien teamed up with Cork’s Ray Murphy for a 4&3 win over Louth duo Sean Goggin and Jim Judge Jnr while Jason tasted defeat by 2&1 in the doubles alongside National Mens Matchplay winner Stephen O’Reilly over the combination of both Chris Gallagher and Mark Millar. The match was tied at 3-3 after the Scotch Foursomes but Leinster got the upper hand in the Singles.
Damien had a tight battle with former three-time National Matchplay winner Sean Harkins before losing by 2&1 while Jason halved his Singles match with Wexford’s Dean Grannell as Leinster secured the overall win in the penultimate match on the course. The Challenge itself was in aid of Temple Street Children’s Hospital and donations are still being accepted through the page Pitch and Putt Ireland have set up for it online.
The event brings an end to the competitive season for the county in both the Board as well as Deerpark’s 50th Anniversary year. It will be one fondly remembered for two Kerry teams winning Munster and National titles namely the U16 team and the Junior Mens team. At Singles level Deerpark’s Brian McCarthy and Listowel’s Ajay Barrett contested the first ever all Kerry National Matchplay final in the sport which Brian won in Lakeside, Templemore on July 30th. Another Deerpark player Ronan Bennett won the Plate event the same day as Nathan Cronin’s Munster U16 Matchplay win completed a treble for club and county.
All four boys would be the Kerry team that did the Munster and National U16 double as Brian, Ajay and Nathan all represented Ireland in the International Challenge in Catalonia last month.
Tralee meanwhile had a memorable weekend in May when they hosted the Munster Matchplay finals with Lisa O’Connor (Ladies Intermediate) and Catriona O’Connor (Ladies Junior) winning their grades alongside Jason in the Senior Mens and Keith O’Brien nearly making it a fourth success by reaching the Intermediate Mens decider.
We look forward to 2024 again with great anticipation as we saw a thanks to everyone that helped with the running of our events this past year as well as the local media for their coverage of our sport.
