[PHOTO: Steven Gibbons]
The Australian trio battled hard, but could not reel in the South African side that delivered a resounding and historic win for their country on Saturday in the 34th World Amateur Team Championship in Singapore.
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In an event in which two of three scores from each team count per day over four rounds, Christiaan Maas and Daniel Bennett provided all of the scoring for South Africa as it rolled to an eight-shot victory over our squad to capture its first Eisenhower Trophy and reach the podium for the first time in 40 years.
The Australian team of Billy Dowling, Declan O’Donovan and Harry Takis [below] began the final round 11 strokes adrift of the South Africans, meaning that nailing down second place was their most achievable target during the last 18 holes at Tanah Merah Country Club. Closing three-under-par 69s from O’Donovan and Takis did the trick, relegating England to third place by two strokes.
The final round by Takis, who won this year’s Singapore Open Amateur Championship by 11 strokes, marked a 10-shot improvement from his third-round 79 and the Aussies’ third consecutive round of six-under-par.
“I went home last night, and [our] coaches had a chat with me about keeping my head up and trying to do what I do best, and I did that today,” said Takis, who will return to Singapore to compete in the Singapore Open in November. “It’s always an honour to represent your country… We don’t take it for granted.”
Far out of the running was the US team, made up of three recent Walker Cup winners who narrowly avoided becoming the first American squad to finish worse than 10th place in the biennial competition.
Maas, ranked sixth in the World Amateur Golf Ranking, was the class of the field, closing with a 69 to complete a week in which he shot all four rounds in the 60s. With only three bogeys for the 72 holes, Maas’ 22-under individual total was 10 shots clear of the next-best score – which belonged to O’Donovan. Bennett scored even-par 72 to finish at seven-under. Charl Barnard, the reigning champion of the South African Amateur, did not see any of his scores count.
“I’m relieved, happy. It’s nice to see that my game can travel. It’s a long flight over here, different conditions,” Maas said. “It’s a long week. I think building a lead, everybody thinks it’s all happy, but it also comes with a lot of pressure… Being in a team event, it can quickly go the other way.”
The US team of high-school senior Mason Howell and two Oklahoma State University juniors, Preston Stout and Ethan Fang, faltered in the first round when each player shot 75, and though the Americans fought back with three straight team rounds of five-under, they ultimately finished tied for 10th at nine-under 567.
The American men, who have won the team event 16 times, were hoping to follow the US women, who captured the World Team Championship a week ago by beating Spain and the Republic of Korea in a tiebreaker. A victory by the men would have marked only the second time that men’s and women’s teams from the same country swept the championships. The US was the first to do it in 1994.
