It was very much roles reversed in the final of the DevonGolf Women’s County Championship on Sunday where East Devon’s Gudrun Nolan got the better of perennial powerhouse Chloe Howard.
FORMAT: 36-hole stroke play qualifier / 2 rounds of matchplay
Last year the Boringdon Park player beat Nolan 7&5 to claim her first county title in seven years and this time around the two again qualified from the stroke play qualifer in first and second before winning their semi-final matches in emphatic fashion.
And after just five holes of the final at Yelverton, Nolan was three down but this time she was able to stick with the 2022 West of England Amateur champion right to the finish, holing a seven-footer on the last to win by one hole.
She was even able to block out the potentially-distracting sight of her mum Maria filming the historic moment from the back of the green.
“I looked up to see mum trying to hide the fact she was taking a video,” said the 19-year-old, who is set to start a golf degree in the USA later this Summer.
“I just blocked it all out. All my putts had been coming up short and I just needed one to drop and just thought ‘This would be the perfect one to drop’.”
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Drop it did to cap an enthralling back-nine battle, the final ebbing and flowing after the East Devon player got back on level level terms by 11, aided by a tweak to her swing. After the fifth, Dad and caddie Thor pointed out she was taking the club up too far on the inside.
However the rejuvenated Nolan did not stay on level terms for long as she lost the 12th but then won 14 and 15 to edge ahead for the first time.
The Boringdon Park player, who was also runner-up in 2019, hit back at the next but then she found trouble off the tee at the par three 17th and, after considerable deliberation, took an unplayable before chipping on to the green.
Nolan, who was born in Iceland but has lived in the UK since she was six, had struck her tee shot to 45 feet and made a brilliant job of lagging the birdie attempt to inside a foot to secure the hole and the lead for the second time.
And this time she would not lose it but she did make it hard for herself. After missing to the left with her drive, she could not find the putting surface in two while her playing partner had 15 feet left for birdie.
The former Devon Girls champion chipped to seven feet and Howard, agonisingly left her third shot an inch short, something her opponent did not do with the all-important final stroke.
A day earlier, Howard had won the stroke play by seven shots while Churston’s Lauren McGinnis and Royal North Devon’s Liz Bird also qualified for the main event before losing in the semi-finals.