Luke's bang on target at Wildwood
18/10/2016
Redhill Golf Centre’s Luke Bangerter delivered a stunning nine-under-par performance to walk away with the Wildwood Invitational Pro-Am’s top prize.
His 63 took the £825 winner’s cheque by a street, beating the 67s of nearest rivals Christopher Rodgers (Richings Park) and Billy Hemstock (Beaverbrook) by four shots and pushing them into the runners up spot and cheques for £550.
Bangerter is feeling much more positive about things after his first win in 2016.
“I’ve been putting together some good scores in the past few weeks,” he said, “including a 65 at King’s Hill in the Westcoast PGA Southern Professionals’ Championship, and one round that could have been a lot lower in the Crisp Thinking PGA Farnham Finale OOM.”
“2015 was proving a really poor year, so 14 months ago I started with Clive Tucker at Wildwood. I told him I didn’t care how long it took to get results, but this season was starting to stretch my patience. On the other hand, as Clive and others have pointed out, winning here with a 65 is as good a sign as any I could want to stick at it, rather than quitting and getting a full time job.
“With the ups and downs of playing professional golf, even when combined with my coaching income, a long spell of poor results is going to make you stop and think whether a full time job isn’t a better bet, even for a while. But I’m really pleased this has happened when it did, and now I’m really keen to see how far I can go.”
Bangerter’s round started on the 18th where his seven iron second flew the green and what should have been a birdie turned into a par, which as he said, “I started to think, ‘Here we go again…”.
But he reached the turn with five birdies on his card and narrowly missed an eagle at the 10th. With things clearly going his way, Bangerter then birdied the short 12th to get to seven-under-par.
“With five holes to go, in the past I’d have started thinking about defending instead of attacking, but I stuck to my game plan and played aggressive.”
Staying focused, Bangerter birdied the 15th and then his final hole, the 17th, for a potentially life changing 65 and his first win in 2016.
“Going into the winter period now, I’ll have time to mull things over and make plans for 2017. I’m getting a lot of encouragement from all sorts of people right now, and I hope like Clive said that it really is a sign of things to come.”
