FORMAT: 54-hole stroke play
Nottinghamshire’s Amelia Wan has been a model of consistency in amateur events over the last two years and the Sherwood Forest golfer displayed plenty of that to win the Midland U-16s Girls Open at Hawkstone Park yesterday.
A raft of impressive top ten finishes in 2021 led to her being called up into the England Girls squad for this season and again, at the Shropshire venue, she put on a masterclass of mature golf to win by four shots from Foxhills junior Matilde Santilli.
The 15-year-old finished fourth last year in this competition but wasn’t going to let that happen again. She accumulated 14 pars in the final round to ensure the rest of the field were kept at bay, having started it with a three-shot advantage.
“I just couldn’t get the putter going in the final round,” said Amelia.
“But staying calm was the main thing. Of course, in the back of your mind, you know you have a three-shot lead but I stayed level headed and just kept going.”
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Even a potentially-unsettling double bogey at the sixth failed to derail her march towards the biggest title of her golfing career so far.
After blocking her drive into woodland, she had to pitch out sideways and then missed the green with her third. Having chipped on, she shaved the hole with her bogey butt.
But at the very next hole she got a shot back and registered another birdie at 14 to get herself level for her round. That effectively killed off any hopes her playing partners might have had of toppling the long-time leader.
Amelia closed with a 74 to finish two-under for the tournament and none of the other 17 players to make the cut could better that in the concluding round.