Former British boys champion beats No 2 seed at Royal Troon

Bob Torrance turns the clock

back for Jordan Findlay to

topple Wallace Booth

By COLIN FARQUHARSON

Wallace Booth's failure to survive the halfway cut in last week's South of England Open at Walton Heath, coupled with today's first-round exit from the Allied Surveyors' Scottish amateur championship at Royal Troon, could cost the the Comrie man a Walker Cup team place when the GB&I selectors meet on Sunday to pick the team to face the United States in September.

His brilliant team match-play record - Eisenhower Trophy world championship success last October and European championship-winning team member only a few weeks ago - could yet win him enough selectors' votes to pull him through when set against his disappointing form as an individual this season.

The giant-killer who cut down the No 2 seed was Jordan Findlay, pictured above by Cal Carson Golf Agency, back home in Fraserburgh after four years at East Tennessee State University, during which time his standard of golf performance declined considerably from the level that saw him win the British boys' championship at Conway in 2004 and reach the final again the following year at Hunstanton.

Booth himself, of course, played four years on the US circuit as a student at Augusta State but Wallace was a star member of that university's golf team almost from start to finish.

Booth went into today's tie ranked No 112 under the R&A WAGR while Finlay was No 1037. That is a big, big gap but the Jordan that turned up today was much more like the young man for whom the brightest of golf futures was predicted at one time.

US college golf was expected to make him an even better player. It didn't. The whole story of why it didn't will be told some day.

Bob Torrance must have been mighty pleased at the Findlay's 3 and 2 success over the second favourite for the Scottish title. He has been working the young man from Buchan hard for a fortnight - and it showed.

Findlay set out to build up an early lead which he felt he would almost certainly need when Booth, the former British junior wrestling champion and the stronger golfer, came back at him over the difficult holes on the inward nine which were playing downwind today.

Findlay's game plan worked a treat. He was five holes to the good after 11 before Booth, as anticipated, slashed three holes off his deficit by winning the 12th, 13th and 14th.

It could have been a crisis for Jordan but he kept calm and was able to halve the 15th and 16th for a notable victory which might be the turning point in Findlay's golf career.

The second-day's count of fallen seeds was again two. No 7 Steven McEwan (Caprington), beaten in last year's final but off the boil for most of this season, lost by one hole to US-based Andrew Abercrombie.

Ross Kellett (Colville Park), the third seed, is the only seed left in the bottom half of the draw.

One of the best come-from-behind wins of the day was achieved by former Scottish stroke-play and match-play champion Kevin McAlpine from Alyth. He was four down at the turn to multi-Lothians champion Stuart Smith but a birdie at the 10th lit his fuse and three putts by Smith at the 11th helped Kevin put wheels on his rally and he won in the end on the 18th green.

That was quite a performance by a man who has only recently been able to return to golf after a knee cruciate ligament operation in February.

The second-round ties began in the afternoon and the seeded Gavin Dear (Murrayshall), Keir McNicoll (Carnoustie) and Paul O'Hara (Colville Park), the only remaining seeds in the top half of the draw, all entered the third round without too much of a strain.

Mind you, that's not quite being fair to the gutsy performance by Deeside youngster Thomas Rennie who took Dear - now 12th ranked in the world - to the 17th green before admitting defeat by 2 and 1.

“Thomas was a very tough opponent and with the wind gusting made it much more difficult to judge shots and we were both making mistakes. It was the kind of a day, had it been a stroke-play event, when you would have been happy to break 80," said Gavin.

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