Boys’ Championship Golf: Ben Kinsley insists he won’t let colourful foe distract him

JAKE Scott, a huge Rickie Fowler fan, has been warned that he can be as colourful as he likes for a morning match today in the Paul Lawrie Foundation Scottish Boys’ Championship because he still won’t dazzle his opponent at Murcar Links.

“We’ll see what he comes out with, but I’ve known him for ages so I’ve seen all the stuff he wears,” declared St Andrews 16-year-old Ben Kinsley, a semi-finalist at Dunbar 12 months ago, as he looked forward to a fourth-round tussle with the flamboyant Buckpool player.

Yesterday, Scott, also 16, wore Fowler’s trademark Sunday orange gear as he holed a brace of 20 ft birdie putts back-to-back – at the 16th and 17th – in eventually shaking off Lanark’s Craig Boyd to progress to the last 32.

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Kinsley, a descendent of 1893 Open champion Willie Auchterlonie, joined him there after beating Nairn Dunbar’s Craig Oram in the event for the second year running, the margin having also been 2 and 1 when the Fifer prevailed in the quarter-finals in East Lothian.

Sniffing revenge, Oram started strongly and was two up after eight, but missed from 5 ft at the ninth after his opponent had holed from double that distance, the tide starting to turn Kinsley’s way thereafter.

“After playing him last year, I knew it was going to be a tough match,” admitted last year’s Scottish Under-16s champion. “There were times when I could have got annoyed with myself, but I was able to stay patient and it paid off in the end.”

Kinsley’s conqueror in last year’s semi-finals, David Wilson, went on to lift the title and the Troon Welbeck player is on course to make the first successful defence since Scott Henry achieved the feat here seven years ago, having “been in control” from the off as he beat Hamilton’s David Cleland in the afternoon.

Since staging a remarkable recovery – he was eight down at one point in the 36-hole final – to claim the crown, Wilson has gone back to his boyhood coach, Rowallan Castle professional Ross Aitken. “We made some big changes over the winter in a bid to make my bad shots better,” said the 17-year-old Ayrshireman.

On a day when most of the showers hitting the Granite City slipped past to the south, Glencruitten’s Robert McIntyre stepped up his bid to become the first left-hander to lift this title since Ben Collier, the 1990 champion at West Kilbride, with a thumping 6 and 4 victory over Dumfries & County’s Connor Syme.

The 15-year-old, who also plays shinty at junior level for Oban Cammanachd, arrived here in good fettle, having holed a monster eagle putt at the final hole to help Scotland Under-16s win a quadrangular event at Hilton Templepatrick, near Belfast, at the weekend.

Following a third-round exit for James Steven of Bothwell Castle, Jamie Savage is now the backmarker on his own, though it has been far from an easy passage thus far for the 17-year-old, who plays off plus-two at Cawder. In fact, he had to pull off a Houdini-style escape to recover from being four down with eight to play in the second round.

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“It was a case of trying to dig myself out of a hole and I was on a high this morning after managing to do that,” said Savage after a marginally less stressful but equally rewarding win at the second extra hole over Daniel Flannery.