It seems the European Tour has the same problems that the PGA Tour has: rain delays. Three groups of players were forced to finish their third rounds Sunday morning at the Estoril Open. Paul Lawrie held the third-round lead, but England’s Paul Broadhurst went on to win the Portuguese Open after fellow countryman Barry Lane gift-wrapped the victory for Broadhurst.
Lane needed par on the last hole to claim the winner’s check; however, the events of his final hole can only be described as a golf nightmare.
Lane was at -14, leading by one, when he prepared to tee off on the last hole. His tee shot went left, into a scrubby group of bushes. He managed to get out of that, but overshot the fairway into more bushes. His third shot hit the root of a tree and shot in the opposite direction out of bounds. Then, he had to take a drop and his new shot landed in an unplayable lie and a penalty stroke. Lane hit up short of the green, chipped up and two-putted for a nine and a finish in fifth.
Lane wasn’t the only one imploding on Sunday. Scotland’s Paul Lawrie looked to be cruising on Sunday to a victory after slumping on the European Tour the past two years. At the close of the third round Lawrie held a one-stroke lead over Lane and Jose-Filipe Lima. The former British Open Champion took a triple-bogey seven on the 17th to fall out of the lead. Lawrie had a chance to tie Broadhurst with a six-foot putt for birdie on 18, but failed to convert and finished in second place.
Broadhurst won with a score of -13 to claim his sixth European Tour title. He started the final round in fourth place, two shots off of the lead. Broadhurst must have thought his tournament was over when he bogeyed two of his first five holes; however, he made a run of seven birdies to turn his round around.
Portugal’s own Lima did his new country proud by finishing in third. He ended the tournament with style by chipping in for a three to secure third place outright.
The final hole caused difficulties for a number of players during the tournament. In addition to Lane, Nick Dougherty, Michael McLean. and Peter Hedblom all endured quadruple-bogey eights while South African Richard Sterne recorded the solitary birdie.
Throughout the week, there were 67 bogeys on the 474-yard par four, with only 62 pars. The average score on number 18 (in the first round) was 4.827.
Pos Player R1 R2 R3 R4 Tot 1 Paul Broadhurst 68 66 70 67 -13 2 Paul Lawrie 69 67 66 70 -12 3 Jose-Filipe Lima 69 65 69 70 -11 4 Richard Sterne 71 67 70 66 -10 5 Barry Lane 68 67 68 72 -9 6 Stephen Dodd 68 69 70 69 -7 T7 Gary Emerson 73 71 66 67 -5 T7 Jamie Donaldson 75 68 72 64 -5 T7 Niclas Fasth 70 71 68 70 -5 T7 Ian Garbutt 70 66 73 70 -5 T7 Ignacio Garrido 71 66 71 71 -5 T7 Stephen Scahill 67 70 72 70 -5
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