Golf Tips

Irish amateur international Stephanie Meadow has qualified for the Women’s British Open which starts on Thursday at Carnoustie along with Ireland’s leading tour professional Rebecca Codd.

Both carded rounds of 71 at the Panmure club near Carnoustie and then faced a nerve racking playoff with six others competing for the final five spots in the Open.

Meadow, who was runner up to Lisa Maguire in the European Amateur Championship last weekend, was one of four players to birdie the second extra hole and Codd then claimed the very last spot in the final ‘major’ of the womens season.

Irony is asking a guy who has just stepped out of his shiny, black Ferrari if he’d been feeling the pinch recently.

Darren Clarke’s agent, Chubby Chandler, has been quoted as saying his Open victory at Sandwich solved “a big cash flow problem” for the Ulsterman.

As Clarke’s €197,000 Ferrari 612 Scaglietti, resplendent with its personalised ’60 DC’ number plate, growled into the car park at Killarney Golf and Fishing Club, it was clear the term ‘cash-strapped’ is relative.

Revealing he’d had the super car for 18 months, Clarke described it as “comfortable”, a term which one newspaper report last weekend suggested did not apply to his finances before he hit the jackpot at St Georges.

In it Chandler said Clarke had been hit hard by the worldwide recession and that he lost “an awful lot of money” on the private jet he bought with Lee Westwood at the top of the market in early 2006 and offloaded last year.

The agent also suggested that since moving back to Portrush with his two sons last autumn, Clarke had been unable to sell his former €5.4m hole in the Surrey stockbroker belt, alleging: “that created big problems as well”.

Yet, when asked yesterday if he’d been cash-strapped before winning at St Georges, Clarke said bluntly: “Not particularly. No.

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Alex Noren recorded a seven-shot win at the Scandinavian Masters despite shooting a five-over 77 in the final round on Sunday.

The Swede, playing in front of his home crowd at the Bro Hof Slott Golf Course in Stockholm, held an 11-shot lead heading into the last round on a day when strong winds made scoring tough.

No player had ever lost on the European Tour with such a big lead and this time was no different as Noren won his third title, finishing at 15-under.

Englishman Richard Finch was the only man to shoot an under-par round – a 69 – as he finished seven shots back in second.

Sweden’s Niklas Lemke was third at five-under, while Australian Scott Hend and Spaniard Pablo Martin were a further shot back.

Noren, so brilliant in the first three rounds, shot a double bogey, five bogeys and two birdies – at holes 1 and 18 – in difficult conditions.

In an impressive round, Finch shot six birdies, as well as a triple bogey on the troublesome par-three 17th hole.

He was not the only one to struggle on the penultimate hole, with Englishman Steve Webster needing 11 shots to find the cup during in his disastrous round of 91, while Norwegian Fredrik Andersson Hed took 12 shots in his round of 18-over.

SACKED caddie Steve Williams has slammed former boss Tiger Woods, saying he has lost respect for golf’s fallen idol.

Though their parting after 12 hugely successful years was not made public until this week, Williams revealed that the news was broken to him by Tiger on Sunday at the AT&T Championship earlier this month.

“I met with Tiger after the completion of the final round,” explained the New Zealander, who caddied for Aussie Adam Scott at that tournament and in the US and British Opens as Woods was laid up by knee and Achilles tendon injuries.

“I’d say I was very disappointed,” he said.

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VANCOUVER — He fired his Canadian coach.

He fired his Canadian caddie.

And then, Sean O’Hair fired a four-day total of four-under 276 to win the 2011 RBC Canadian Open, beating fellow American Kris Blanks on a sudden-death playoff hole at Shaughnessy Golf and Country Club.

Go figure.

“To be a champion of the Canadian Open, somebody was telling me it’s the third-oldest national championship, so that’s pretty cool,” O’Hair said. “You look at the names on that trophy and there’s some pretty cool names and to be a part of that crew, it’s an honour. I think that’s the best word for it — I’m truly honoured to be the champion of this year’s Canadian Open.

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