Spain’s Alvaro Quiros produced a fantastic winning final round performance of six under under par 64 at the Morson International Pro-Am Challenge to stun Welshman Mark Pilkington into second place after the Welshman had dominated the event at the Marriott Worsley Park Hotel and Country Club for the first three rounds.
As is often the case in golf, the man who dominated the tournament for the first 54 holes was overtaken on final day by a player who had gone about his business quietly and efficiently before emerging from the chasing pack on the final day to steal victory.
It was a day of disappointment for Pilkington, but every bit of credit must go to Quiros for his excellent final round performance that was worthy of any tournament.
The Spaniard started the day well, with two birdies in his first five holes taking him to nine under for the tournament, which, coupled with Pilkington’s terrible bogey, par, double-bogey start put him into a one stroke lead.
Pilkington hit back with an eagle three on the par five fifth to move back to ten under, but Quiros soon asserted himself back into the lead by picking up strokes on the seventh and the ninth to turn in four under par 31, and take a one shot lead into the back nine.
Another birdie for Quiros on the tenth saw him increase his lead to two, an advantage he managed to maintain by cancelling out his bogey on the 11th with a birdie on the 12th.
And so the two stroke advantage remained until the short par four 17th, when Quiros, playing in the penultimate group of the day – one match ahead of Pilkington – landed the killer blow to the Welshman’s hopes by sinking a three foot birdie putt to move three strokes clear.
A par four at the tough 18th for the 23 year old Spaniard put the seal on a mightily impressive final round, and he added his fourth round score of 64 to his previous three scores 67-68-68 to pick up the first prize of €23,318, that moved him to seventh place on the Challenge Tour Rankings.
“This win changes everything for me,” smiled Quiros. “Before today I only had category 13 on the Challenge Tour which didn’t mean much in terms of playing a lot of tournaments, but now I can play the rest of the year on the Challenge Tour and try to make my card for The European Tour. Up until now I had been playing on the Peugeot Tour in Spain and relying on invitations for the Challenge Tour but I do not have to wait any more.
“At the start of the round I thought that there was too far to go to win, mostly because the guy at the front me was Mark Pilkington, who is a great player, so I did not really think about winning at the start of the day. I was just thinking about playing well, which I done for most of the week. I wasn’t playing perfectly all week, but it was going well.
“Then, on the tenth, I noticed that I was ahead by one stroke, and after that I played much the same as I had done all week, but I also had the bit of luck that I needed. I made a good birdie on the tenth and then a good up and down for par on the 15th and that kept it going for me.”
The Morson International Pro-Am Challenge saw each of the 58 professionals who made the cut team up with an Amateur partner for the final two rounds, and it was Oliver Lewis who stood alongside Quiros on the winners podium to take the title of wining Amateur with an aggregate two round total of 15 under par 125 for his two rounds.
