2024 Platinum
Playing against more than 100 other professionals from the North-West region, Mike, who'd scarcely played a competitive round this year, fired six birdies in a four-under 68 to win the area qualifier for the Glenmuir Club Professional Championship.
He now heads for Scotland in mid-August when the 72-hole final will be contested over the new Sam Torrance-designed St Andrew Bay course, seven miles from the Home of Golf.
The PGA Cup, the club pros' version of the Ryder Cup, is played every two years but the sequence, like the Ryder Cup, got out of kilter because of the Twin Towers disaster, and the next contest will be in 2005. The St Andrews winner, as well as picking up £10,000, will be an automatic choice for the team.
Mike had the best possible start over the fine St Annes course, birdieing the opening two holes, and adding another at the long fifth. A bogey at the tough 447-yard seventh had him out in a two-under 34.
What Macara called a 'monster' birdie putt of around 50 feet at the par-four 12th set up a back nine of 34 (further birdies at 15 and 18 were only partly offset by a three-putt bogey at the long 17th), and that deprived early leader, Paul Affleck (Heyrose, Knutsford) of the winner's £250 and the sponsors' commemorative glassware.
A former European Tour player, Affleck says his principal aim for the season is 'to get out of the bad habit of not enjoying my golf, and put a smile on my face'.
As happened two days previously in the Glenmuir qualifier at York, a busy play-off (this time seven players teed off for the one remaining place) ended at the first extra hole, when Brookdale's Tony Cuppello birdied the shortish par-four opening hole, by sinking a 20-footer.