Search icon

Golf

17th Jul 2015

Irish amateur Paul Dunne may well have written himself into golfing history at The Open

Heroics

Evan Fanning

Our greatest Dunne since Richard

Not many outside of Irish golf aficionados may have heard of Paul Dunne before Thursday but the Greystones amateur is certainly making a name for himself.

Dunne hit an opening round of 69 on Thursday, keeping him in touching distance of the leaders at St Andrews.

Most probably expected the 22-year-old to fall away as the weekend progressed but he was at it again on Friday with another brilliant 69 to move to -6 overall.

At the time of writing that makes Dunne the leading amateur on the course, in a tie for tenth place, four shots behind the leader Dustin Johnson.

dunne-stats

The start of play at St Andrews was delayed by three hours due to torrential rain so Dunne will have to wait until Saturday morning to see if he has a place in the history books, because he may become only the third amateur in the history of The Open to be in the top 10 after 36 holes.

He has also the tied-lowest score by an amateur after 36 holes in Open history and could become the first Irish player to win The Silver Medal (best score by an amateur) since Rory McIlroy in 2007.

Unsurprisingly he became an instant hero in Ireland.

Dunne has been mistaken several times this week for world No2 Jordan Spieth and it’s not hard to see why.

dunne-spieth

Ireland’s latest golfing star doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page. Someone may want to rectify that fairly quickly.

paul_dunne