Every golfer has dreamed about holing out from distance to win a ‘big one’ and Carlisle’s Katie Sibley came within millimetres of doing just that as she claimed the Cumbria Ladies Championship at Furness yesterday.
FORMAT 36-hole stroke play / 4 rounds of matchplay
After 17 holes of a ding-dong final, Sibley and Silloth’s Hannah Smith stood on the 18th tee all square.
Both then hit the fairway but critically the Carlisle player went first and proceeded to fire her 120-yard approach shot to just six inches. Her opponent responded pretty well, giving herself a 15 footer to stay in the match but her putt just stayed on the high side and the 21-year-old collected the trophy for the second time in four years.
The champion, who is in the middle of a degree from Lenoir Rhyne University in North Carolina, was delighted to regain the title.
She said: “Any time you can win your county championship, that ranks really highly and is a really nice feeling.
“Cumbria is a small county so we are a tight-knit group. All of us want to play well but we also want everyone else to play well.”
There was certainly plenty of excellent golf on show and the final itself typified the birdie-laden nature of the knockout stages.
After winning the first with a birdie, Sibley lost the next three as the Silloth player took control. It stayed that way until the tenth where Smith extended her lead but the Carlisle player fought back brilliantly, taking 11, 12 and 13 to get it back to all square.
Smith responded with a birdie at 15 to go back ahead, only for her opponent to level it up at the earliest possible opportunity, Sibley converting a tricky six footer for birdie on 16.
The 17th was halved in pars before the remarkable climax at 18 and, not for the first time that day, the champion won it in grand style.
In her morning semi-final against Harriet Barker (Carus Green), Sibley rolled in a 30-footer at 17 for a birdie to close things out 2&1.