HUTSBY BEATS US AMATEUR CHAMPION TO WIN SPANISH TITLE
England boy international Sam Hutsby pulled off the biggest
victory of his burgeoning career on Sunday when he won the
Spanish Amateur Championship at Sherry Golf Jerez.
What made the success even more astonishing was that the 17
year old from Hampshire beat Italy’s Edoardo Molinari,
the reigning US Amateur champion, 7 and 6 in the 36 hole final.
Fellow England A squad member Gary Boyd reached the semi-finals
but became one of Molinari’s victims.
With his outstanding record, Molinari, eight years older than
Hutsby, went into the final as favourite but he soon found
he was in a battle as the Lee-on-the-Solent teenager birdied
the second and third holes to open a two hole lead. It was
an advantage he was never to lose. In fact he was five up
at lunch and while the scoring overall wasn’t spectacular,
Hutsby finished an outstanding performance on the 12th green
in the afternoon.
Hutsby qualified third in the 36 hole preliminary competition
after round of 75 and 68, one of 15 English players in the
top 32. He beat Michael Lowe from Surrey 3 and 2 in round
one then accounted for Scotland’s Steven McEwan at the
19th. In the quarter finals Hutsby overcame Frenchman Adrien
Bernadet 3 and 1, then clinched his place in the final with
a 2 hole victory over Spain’s Gonzalo Berlin.
Hutsby, a member of the England under 18 squad, is the latest
in a string of English successes in recent weeks and his victory
follows in the wake of Ben Parker’s wins in the Junior
Orange Bowl in America and in the Tasmanian Open Amateur,
Danny Denison in the Qatar Open Amateur, James Morrison in
the Victorian Amateur, and Adam Gee in the Lake Macquarie
International.
On top of that Gary Wolstenholme finished runner-up in the
New South Wales Medal and Amateur Championship, Adam Wainwright
was a semi-finalist in the Portuguese Amateur, while England
retained the Costa Ballena Tournament in Spain.
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