Ambitious Nolan eyeing maiden win after third place finish in Denmark
Liam Nolan believes a maiden win is close after he finished third in the Danish Golf Challenge to leap to seventh in the race for 20 DP World Tour cards.
The Galway star (25) closed with a four-under 68 at Bogense Golf Club to finish just three shots behind home winner Jonathan Goth Rasmussen on 16-under-par.
The Dane came from three shots behind Calum Fyfe and carded a 67 to win by one stroke from the Scot (71) on 19-under to secure his second HotelPlanner Tour win.
He moves up 196 spots to 11th in the Road to Mallorca standings, but while Nolan jumped eight places to seventh, he’s not getting distracted by the race for promotion to the DP World Tour.
The Bearna native followed two top-four finishes in his first two starts in South Africa with five missed cuts in a row, admitting that focusing on the rankings tends to “mess with my head.”
After picking up €21,000 today, he believes he’s close to a maiden win, and that will be his focus now as the second-tier tour enters the meat of the season.
“Yeah, delighted,” said Nolan, who went into the final round just four shots off the lead after making nine birdies in a sensational third-round 65.
“I was a little bit off where I wanted to be after the first two days, but then the putts started dropping Saturday and Sunday, and I managed to get myself back into the tournament.
“Until the lads had a good few birdies coming in, I was within touching distance. So, yeah, very happy.”
Nolan knows he can’t afford to take his eye off the ball in the battle for promotion to the DP World Tour and admitted that he was frustrated by his run of missed cuts.
“Yeah, I had a little bit of a cold patch there after South Africa,” he confessed. “I was still playing good, just nothing was really going for me.
“But it's great to have another good result to add to the two in South Africa. So if I keep doing what I'm doing and keep finding myself at the top of leaderboards, hopefully, a win will be around the corner shortly.”
He added: “It’s hard not to be frustrated, but myself and my caddie do a really good job of just taking positives and moving on.
“So we did that really well the last couple of months, and it results in good weeks if you can keep positive during the rough patches.”
Nolan knows he has a long way to go to secure his card, and he won’t be looking at the rankings.
“I don't really have any,” he said of his goals. “I don't like looking at the Road to Mallorca or order of merits; they tend to mess with my head a little bit.
“So I'm just going to try and go to every tournament to play well and see what happens at the end of the year.”
Meath’s Daniel Mulligan closed with a three-over 75 to finish joint 61st on level par to move to 200th in the standings.
