Dumfries golfer Liam Johnston was able to put a tough few years behind him to win his third European Challenge Tour title in Spain at the weekend.
The 29-year-old posted a -3 67 on the final day to finish two shots clear of Todd Clements to win the Empordà Challenge in Girona. Johnston has had his struggles on the tour, having missed 16 of his last 20 cuts before the big win.
He said: “It feels pretty good. It’s actually not just pretty good, it’s incredible.
“It’s unbelievable, it’s been a couple of really hard years for me recently, and even the start of this year has been tough, but I have just been persevering and working hard and I’m glad it’s finally paid off here.”
He added: “It’s nice to know that I’ve been working so hard for two years, sometimes not on the right things, but just keeping working hard, and just learning about myself.
“It’s more that I’m just happy to see that it is starting to pay off now. You have to stay on the front foot, you have got to keep pushing to try to get into that top 20 and then try to finish as high up as you can. Obviously it’s nice, but I’m already thinking about the next few weeks going forward.”
Johnston dropped just five shots all weekend with three of them coming on Thursday’s opening round where he ended +1. But the former Dumfries and County player rallied to card a -5 65 and -6 round of 64 to put him in contention as he sat in second place.
The only shot he dropped in the final round came on the 17th and he insisted that he only looked at the leaderboard on the final tee.
He said: “I didn’t look at a single leaderboard all week until the 18th tee, I knew I was up there obviously because I was in the final group today,” he said. “I just kept an eye on my score and just really tried to get to 15 under – that was my goal for today.
“I was just trying to be as aggressive as I could because the guys behind me are all so capable of shooting seven or eight under and catching up. Once I got to the 18th tee and saw I was two shots ahead it made the decision for me.
“I was thinking earlier in the round that if I was in that situation I wasn’t going to hit driver and that’s what I did - I played the two iron and then a lovely five iron onto the green and managed to get out of there with two putts.”
Johnston’s victory sees him climb 94 places into 10th on the Road to Mallorca Rankings, and gives him €40,000 and 40,000 Challenge Tour points.
The titles are added to his Andalucía Costa del Sol Match Play 9 and Kazakhstan Open wins from 2018.
The Road to Mallorca now makes its second trip of the season to the Czech Republic for the Kaskáda Golf Challenge at Kaskáda Golf Resort from June 16-19.
