ENNIS NATIVE, Áine Donegan is currently in second place in the US Women’s Open after a storming opening round in what is her first major.
She fired a very impressive three-under 69 to share the lead at Pebble Beach heading into the clubhouse. China’s Xiyu Lin went one better than Donegan to open with a 68 and take the early clubhouse lead on four-under-par.
Áine’s opening round included five birdies and an eagle which, despite a difficult start which began with a pair of bogeys, saw her post an excellent three-under-par total. Playing the course the wrong way around, Donegan dropped shots at the tenth and eleventh holes before an eagle two on the fifteenth sparked her into life. She made a deuce on the par-three seventeenth to get into the red before dropping another shot on the first, her tenth.
From there she birdied four of her next five holes to get to four-under-par. She had a dropped shot on the ninth, her final hole.
Her opening round is made even more striking given her driver was smashed and clubs lost en route to California. She landed on Sunday after playing for Ireland and Great Britain in the Vagliano Trophy at Royal Dornoch. It took her and her coach and caddie Gary Madden thirty hours to get from Scotland to California via Dublin and Newark but while her clubs didn’t arrive until the eve of the tournament.
Replacement clubs from PING were received by Áine following the debacle.
Twenty one year old Áine who is a member of Woodstock and Lahinch Golf Clubs produced one of the rounds of her line when settling into proceedings in the US Open.
Speaking in the US after returning to the clubhouse, Áine told reporters that her performance was “definitely at the top” of what she’s done in her career. “No doubt about it. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve started bogey-bogey. But for me to come back and play the rest of the round the way I finished, I’m really proud of myself for that and I’m really looking forward to tomorrow”.
“It’s like, everything happens for a reason, you know that the clubs were late and then the driver came and it was broken. All of a sudden, now I have no choice but to put the new driver in and I added the new three wood and a hybrid as well. And fortunately for me, they were the perfect fit,” she added.
