Colm thrilled with victory

Athlone man Colm Moriarty claimed his second tournament win of the current golf season and his first on the European Challenge Tour when he won the Firstplus Wales Challenge at the Vale of Glamorgan Golf Club on Sunday last.   Colm Moriarty had already won this year on the Euro Pro Tour in Nottingham three months ago and last Sunday’s win has lifted him from 176th to 34th on the Challenge Tour Order of Merit and put him in with a big chance of earning his European Tour Card for next season.   Speaking to The Roscommon People five months ago, Colm Moriarty said that he felt that he had turned the corner and that was he was playing very well after two bad years in which his form had dipped alarmingly.   However Moriarty has returned to his old coach Brendan McDaid and he has won twice this summer already. At the weekend the tournament was reduced to 54 holes because of the bad weather.    Play on Thursday was abandoned but Moriarty shot rounds of 68, 65 and 70 to post a 13-under par total of 203. He finished three shots ahead of Felipe Aguilar of Chile and collected a winner’s cheque for €20,800.   Now with the European Challenge Tour moving to Glasson this week Moriarty is full of confidence ahead of the rest of the season.    Colm said: ‘I ‘m very happy to have won – but it was coming – because I was playing very well recently. It was great to put three good rounds together and I am really looking forward to this week and the rest of the season.’    He said: ‘I wasn’t really nervous at all even though I was leading for most of the tournament and I felt in control of my game which was great. I made only one mistake in my last round when I went into the water at the tenth hole but I chipped and putted for a bogey which was key (to his success’ he said.    ‘The big aim is to get my Tour Card for next season and I’m in a great position to do that now. I would dearly love to play well this week at my home course and another strong finish will put me in a great position. I have worked hard with Brendan this year and it’s beginning to pay off. Things are looking up and I hope that plenty of people come out to the tournament this week in Glasson. If the weather is good it will be a great spectacle’ he concluded.   With Irish golf on a high after the brilliant victory of Padraig Harrington in the British Open there is clearly a pep in the step of all Irish golfers and who is to say that Colm Moriarty will not be the next Irish name in lights on the European Tour. If hard work and determination is the yardstick then he is already more than halfway there.