Docherty forfeits two titles in bid for big one

Nick Rodger

Golf Correspondent

Saturday 4 August 2012

Richard Docherty should have been defending the Bearsden club championship today.

Richard Docherty was full of praise for the nine-hole Bearsden club. Picture: Kenny Smith

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Nick Rodger

Instead, the 22-year-old will be trying to capture the Scottish Amateur Championship crown at Royal Dornoch. It's not a bad consolation prize, is it?

Docherty, who has also relinquished his Dumbartonshire County Matchplay title this week because he has been making purposeful strides up here in the Highlands, booked a 36-hole showdown with the former Scottish Boys' champion Grant Forrest after a battling two-hole victory over Bryan Fotheringham in yesterday's last-four encounter.

Given that his best finish so far season was a 25th at the Newlands Trophy and he describes himself as a "middle of the pack man", Docherty's march to the final may have raised a few eyebrows. Yet those in the know at the nine-hole Bearsden club may not be too surprised. With another of its products, Ewen Ferguson, having finished second in the Scottish Boys' Strokeplay Championship at Cardross recently, there is clearly some good work being done in this particular neck of the golfing woods."It's a great club and the juniors get a lot of support," said Docherty, who aims to become the first Dumbartonshire county man to win the national title since Windyhill's Andrew McArthur in 2002. "Things are on the up at Bearsden and I'm not surprised that the results have been coming in. I'm a member at Windyhill, too, but I learned my golf at Bearsden and live just 200 yards away. The club have been good to me and I'll always represent them at tournaments."Docherty, a graduate of Lindenwood College in the US, has certainly represented his club well this week with a series of dogged displays. In yesterday morning's quarter-final clash with the Kirkhill teenager Craig Ross, he was two down with three to play but calm, par golf on the run-in was enough to turn the tie around as his rival stumbled to a trio of damaging bogey-5s.His afternoon duel with Fotheringham, who beat the No.1 seed Graeme Robertson in the last eight, was equally tight. Two down after five, Docherty was presented with a foothold in the game when Fotheringham lost two balls at the sixth and seventh and the Bearsden youngster inched ahead at the eighth with a putt of some 25 feet for birdie. Three holes to the good through 11, Docherty suffered a wobble on the 12th when he dumped a little bump-and-run straight into the bunker to surrender the hole before Fotheringham birdied the next to up the ante. Docherty was still clinging to a one hole lead playing the 18th but, as the tension mounted, he knocked a superbly flighted wedge into eight-feet to crush Fotheringham's hopes of a last-gasp salvage operation."I've always had a goal of getting into the Scotland squad," added Docherty, whose parents are currently holidaying in Portugal and will miss the biggest day of his career. "That would be the pinnacle for me and a win here would give me that chance."On the date of his late father's birthday, Forrest, who unleashed his driver just twice as he plotted a considered route to success, progressed with a 4&3 win over Lewis Mutch, which started with a birdie putt of 15 feet on the first and ended with a four-footer for a match-winning three on the 15th."All my dad wanted was for me to do my best," he said. Forrest has certainly done that so far this week.

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Docherty forfeits two titles in bid for big one

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