Favourite McDonald has a narrow escape

UNDER a blanket of blue sky – it felt like being in a different country far less a different day – one of several thrilling matches on a long and exhausting third session in the Scottish Boys' Championship may well have involved not only the player who'll emerge triumphant at the end of the week but also a future winner of this event.

Jack McDonald, bidding to become only the fifth player to hold the national boys' match play and stroke play titles simultaneously – the latter fell to him in impressive fashion at Ladybank last summer – is through to the last 32, but only after surviving a "scare" against Bradley Neil, a 14-year-old from Blairgowrie.

Winner of the Scottish Under-14s Championship a few miles up the coast at Largs last summer, Neil was two down with two to play against the tournament favourite but won the 17th, where his opponent three-putted from long distance, and then holed a 35-foot birdie putt across the green at the last to force the third-round match into overtime.

McDonald, who afforded himself a refreshing smile on the way to the 19th, was let off the hook when Neil failed to convert a seven-foot birdie chance there before McDonald then got himself out of jail by getting up and down from a treacherous position at the side of the 20th. "If you gave me that shot another ten times, I doubt I'd have done that again," he noted later.

The Barassie 17-year-old was a "relieved" young man after securing victory at the third extra hole, where, after both players had laid up with their approaches, he hit his third shot stiff before Neil missed from six feet to keep the match alive.

"It was really good to get a game like that, even though it was a scare for me," said McDonald, who now meets Willem Kerr, a 15-year-old George Heriot's pupil who plays off five at Craigmillar Park. "For someone who's just turned 14, Bradley is going to be very good and he's a battler as well."

Another 14-year-old, Ewan Scott of St Andrews New, is through to the fourth round after he gave himself a good talking to on the way to the ninth tee – he was three down at that point – and eventually progressed with a 2 & 1 success against Blair MacDonald from Torrance House. "I'd lost a couple of balls due to snap hooks and said to myself, 'Ewan, this isn't good enough," revealed the Madras College pupil, who duly won five holes in a row.

A proven winner – he beat a strong field to claim the Reid Trophy, the English Boys' Open Under-14 Stroke Play Championship last year – Scott, who will captain Scotland in an under-16s event in Holland next week, reckons he's added 30 yards to his game since starting to do strength and conditioning work at St Andrews University.

As other leading contenders including Conor O'Neil, Grant Forrest, Callum Stewart, Ian Redford, Simon Fairburn and Scott Gibson also progressed, the shot of the day was undoubtedly delivered by Andrew Borg, a 17-year-old originally from Dumfries but now based near Preston.

All square playing the last in his third-round match against West Linton's Fraser Thain, Borg holed his second shot from 96 yards for a match-winning eagle at the last. "It was a perfect yardage for my wedge but didn't expect it go in," admitted Borg.