BY their own admission, success on the golf course has been rare for Bathurst pair Craig Hanrahan and Adam Lewis.

However, a good patch of form at exactly the right time has helped them to a brilliant come from behind win to snare the Bathurst Golf Club’s annual Jimmy Johnson Matchplay trophy in Sunday’s final.

The pair were taking on Brad Molenkamp, a two-time winner of the competition, along with Dean Oxley. After the first nine holes, it looked like it would be an early day for both teams.

However, a perfect stretch of golf led by Lewis on the back nine brought the underdogs back into the contest and they went on to win 2-up.

Lewis and Hanrahan dragged back a four-hole deficit to be on level terms by the time they finished the 14th. Two more wins at the 15th and 16th meant that they had one hand on the title.

Molenkamp and Oxley rallied at the 17th to keep their chances alive, but a tap-in bogey from Hanrahan was enough to give them the win on the final hole.

“We had a pretty ordinary start, it couldn’t have gone worse on the front nine and were down by four, we were packing it at that stage,” Hanrahan said.

“Adam got us going through those first three holes on the back nine and suddenly we were within one, and then just kept going from there.

“Neither of us have ever won anything like this before, nothing at all really. When we entered we didn’t give ourselves much of a chance of doing anything.”

Both players are currently off a handicap of 26 and in Hanrahan’s words, won the competition as ‘a couple of burglars.’

That they won it at all was remarkable after their start.

“We lost three balls in the first few holes,” Lewis said. 

“We’ve never even played a competition like this together before, we’ve just played a lot of golf together socially and decided to give it a go.”

Club captain Manuel Pro admitted before the final that he was surprised to see Hanrahan and Lewis in the decider. As the official handicapper, he joked afterwards that the duo won’t be playing off such a high mark again.

Pro himself was hoping to claim his first Ivor Hector Trophy for teams knocked out in the first round of the Jimmy Johnson alongside team-mate Stephen Dury.

They met Paul Strik and Graham Simpson and got off to a flying start to be two ahead after as many holes, but from there it steadily went downhill. 

Strik and Simpson went on to win the final 3 and 2.