Evans Wins on Countback - Golf Clothing Journal

A sparkling back nine of 32 hoisted Greetham Valley's Neil Evans to top spot in the PGA Midland qualifier for the Glenmuir Club Professional Championship.

Playing over Kedleston Park in Derby, Neil carded a four-under 68, matching the score of Peterborough's Kevin Dickens, but the Rutland man's 32 won him the sponsors' commemorative crystal, beating Dickens on the way home by three strokes.

Now Evans leads the 15 other top scorers into the Glenmuir 72-hole final, to be played at Southport & Ainsdale in mid-August. There the winner picks up £10,000 plus valuable points towards selection for the Great Britain & Ireland team to contest the PGA Cup with the United States (the club pros' version of the Ryder Cup) next September at The K Club, near Dublin.

Evans' early play was scarcely auspicious, as he dropped shots at the third and fourth holes, but birdies at the short seventh and par-four ninth put him back on an even keel.

Three gains in a row from the 13th plus another at the 516-yard 17th gave him the day's best inward half, highlighted by a superb six-iron second shot at the 417-yard 15th into the wind, which hit the green 10 feet from the flag.

Dickens, a PGA Cup player in Colorado in 1998, would love to make next year's team as well. A flawless outward nine containing three birdies underlined that desire, but that was somewhat marred by bogeys at 13 and 15.

The Peterborough-based player bounced back in style, though, at the long 17th, notching an eagle after his seven-iron second shot finished 20 feet from the pin.

Phil Edwards, who recently moved to Hollinwell after spending a few years at Springwater, could easily have let his head go down after a double bogey at the second - "it was a really bad tee shot, in among trees, and of course I finished up three-putting" - but the 32-year-old buckled down, getting his reward with an eagle three at the long fifth by chipping in from 15 yards.

Now he's looking to make amends for his second-round performance in last year's 72-hole final at St Andrews Bay. "I'd had a good first round, and was lying somewhere around fifth well into the second 18, but I had something like 10 bogeys in a row, and that just floored me."