Dunbar wins Irish Open Amateur

DUBLIN, Ireland (May 9, 2010) -- Rathmore’s Alan Dunbar shot an impressive closing 72 to win the AIB sponsored Irish Amateur Open Championship at the Royal Dublin Golf Club. The twenty year old Irish International started his final round with a bogey five but bounced back with a birdie on the par 5 second hole. He went one under for the round with a birdie on the par 3 fourth hole before firing twelve straight pars. The sequence was broken by a bogey five on the seventeenth hole but a solid regulation par on the final hole secured the win by a single stroke from Scotland’s Kris Nicol who has filled the runner-up spot for the second week in succession having been beaten to the Lytham Trophy by Portstewart’s Paul Cutler last weekend. The trophy will stay at home for the first time since 2003 when Noel Fox (Portmarnock) won the second of his two Irish Amateur Open crowns and as well as holding the premier Irish stroke play title graduates of the Golfing Union of Ireland coaching programme currently hold the three major stroke play titles from across the Irish Sea - the St Andrews Links Trophy (Dunbar), the Brabazon Trophy (Niall Kearney) and the Lytham Trophy.