WITH the golf Justin Sutton was playing in the lead up to the recent Bathurst Golf Club Championships he knew that he was in with a decent shot of claiming his first title.
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Under the pressure of the tournament situation he was still able to bring that high standard to the Bathurst fairways, producing three consistent rounds of golf, including a two under par middle round of 69, to hit an even 213 and win the tournament by three strokes over Stephen McDonald.
The rounds of 72, 69 and 72 showed that consistency is key in the race for a title, with McDonald (73, 73, 70) the only other A grade rival to hit at two over par or better across all his rounds.
Reece Hodson (220) bounced back from a tough first round to finish in third while Cameron Jackson (221) and Matt Phillips (223) rounded out a top five who finished with a gap back to the rest of the pack.
Sutton said in the lead up to the tournament he was putting all elements of his game together at the right time.
"It felt pretty easy out there. A lot of practice went into it. I've been hitting the ball well for the past four to five months and it was just about getting back to the fundamentals and stripping it all down," he said.
"I under a four under par round two weeks before the championships started and was doing a fair bit of putting drills on the practice green, because that wasn't up to scratch, and that led into that four under par round the week after.
"I'd been averaging 85 per cent fairways in regulation, 14 greens in regulation per round and around that 27 to 28 putts per round."
Sutton still believed he left shots out of the course during the tournament, which bodes well for his future in the region's events.
The start to his two under round also wasn't red hot and Sutton steadied himself to get things on track.
"As any competitor across any sport would tell you, when you're leading at the start of something there's a lot more pressure to maintain the lead than to chase. I did feel a bit of that at the start of day two but that ended up being my best round," he said.
"I was ecstatic with that round. You've got guys like Reece, Stephen and Cam who are very good and can shoot the lights out any day of the week they want. The round really felt like a five or six under round after all the pressure that I put on myself to hold that lead.
"The front nine I didn't really hit a fairway. I just scrapped really well and made the long putts that I needed to for par. Then I finally hit the green on the 8th on that par three and birdied that, and then was pin-high putting for eagle on the next hole and sunk that 20-footer.
"Just like that I went from one over par to two under. I was on three under after 10 but had a late bogey. The back nine things felt like they went into cruise control and things started to come together."
Warren Matthews (248) won B grade by a stroke over William Casey, Fred Hennessy (256) beat Rory Elphick in a playoff for the B1 title and Kevin Delaney (272) was a dominant C grade winner.
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