Ray Malone, overall winner of our 20th Fantasy Golf Challenge is pictured receiving his prize from Deirdre Houlihan, FBD Hotels at Faithlegg Golf Club. Also included are Ger Lawton, Sports Editor, Waterford News & Star and Derry Kiely, Faithlegg GC. Photo: Joe Evans.
As the song says….’and now the end is near, and so I face the final curtain,’ and here we are the last hurrah for our Fantasy Golf Challenge of 2016. I don’t know about you but I think the 12 weeks just flew by this year.
I must start by saying a huge thank you to Karl Cullen and all at Faithlegg Golf Club and Deirdre Houlihan and all at FBD Hotels for coming on board as our weekly and overall prize sponsors this year. You were a pleasure to deal with and hopefully we’ll be able to team up again real soon.
After the penultimate set of tournaments Ray Malone shot to the top of the overall standings and the big questions were whether the Belvedere Drive man had timed his run to perfection and of course could he stay there for the final week and claim the overall prize of a brilliant golfing weekend for four at the fabulous Castleknock Hotel & Country Club or would someone else swoop at the 11th hour to deny him.
His lead was five coming into the final week, which was a good lead, but once his Inter Malone team scored a very impressive final week tally of 14 then he was going to be near on impossible to deny and so it proved. That excellent final week saw him stretch his lead and in the end he had a huge 11 points to spare over Mick Hassett. The final top five was made up by Michael Dollard, Nicky Whelan and Francis O’Connor.
For the record Ray’s team and points were provided by Patrick Reed (41), Rafa Cabrera Belo (26), Francesco Molinari (29), Victor Dubuisson (15), Ross Fisher (23) and Pablo Larrazabal (7).
The final weekly prize of this challenge was taken by a man from the deadliest Fantasy Golf estate in the land….Jim O’Loughlin from Sweetbriar Lawn in Tramore with a brilliant score of 26 (Fitzpatrick 10, Horschel 9 & Colsaerts 7).
So there you have it. Thanks once again to you for entering and I hope you enjoyed and we’ll see you again next year.
