Alex posts whirlwind round to seal trip to Little Aston

Alex Higgs even surprised himself as he took the honours in the Titleist & FootJoy PGA Professional Championship west qualifying event.

The Stinchcombe Hill Golf Club-attached professional carded a three under par round of 68 in the event, held at Burnham & Berrow Golf Club in Somerset.

That earned him victory by three shots ahead of Welsh duo Cennydd Mills (Mills Coaching) and Toby Hunt, of St Mellons Golf Club in Cardiff.

They and 12 other qualifiers will now go to Little Aston Golf Club in Sutton Coldfield for the £78,000 grand final which is being held between July 24-27.

But Gloucestershire-based Higgs did not expect to finish top of the leaderboard - and he will be playing in his first PGA Professional Championship final.

An impressive front nine of 32 - which included an eagle at the fourth hole - all but sealed his qualification and he would have won by an even greater margin but for two bogeys at the 12th and 18th holes.

“I’ll take a three shot win, but it could’ve been a few more,” he admitted.

“When I got to five under I knew I just needed to try and par my way in, knowing I might drop a few shots but I only had a couple of bogeys.

“It’s my first time in the final, I’ve only been qualified a couple of years and I couldn’t play in it in 2017.”

And with the final being played in the West Midlands, Higgs will feel at home as he studied at the University of Birmingham.

“I’ve probably played Little Aston about six times, so I have a fairly good understanding of it and I’ve had some experience of it, although I think the last time I played there didn’t do that well,” said Higgs, who works in sales and customer services in the golf industry.

“I haven’t played much in the winter, and maybe five or six events this year, so I wasn’t expecting a score like that. I was hopeful of qualifying, I’d shot level par the day before in an event just after getting back from Holland on a works trip. So I did feel quite good going into the event at Burnham - but it had been a whirlwind few days.”