Licata wins second strokeplay title

Giuseppe Licata may have failed to overcome his season-long rival Ross Langdon and win his third successive Gloucester and Somerset PGA Order of Merit, but he did win the Total Triumph championship title for a second time.

The Chipping Sodbury teaching professional, who also won the event in 2013, earned the strokeplay crown by matching par of 142 with two rounds of 71 at a sunny Mendip Spring while the Brickhampton Court man could only finish fifth.

No player managed to break par in either round of the final event of the eight-month winter schedule played under blue skies with a stiff breeze and some very testing flag positions on the slick greens.

Birdies were hard to achieve and a missed green in the wrong place usually ended in a bogey or worse.

** Order of Merit winner Ross Langdon, left, with sponsor Neil Mossman.

Most players racked up a big number or two at some point during the day. Langdon even took nine at the 16th and posted 148 to finish fifth.

With the players going out in reverse OOM positions Tim Elliott (Tall Pines) was the early leader on 72. 

This was matched by Cirencester’s Ed Goodwin and Clevedon’s Ashley Mansell, complete with his standard chip in.

Licata snatched the lunchtime lead with his level par effort from the final group on the course and it was a lead he would not relinquish for the rest of the day.

On the second circuit Elliott and Mansell slipped back with 77s and ended in a tie for sixth.

Burnham & Berrow’s George Ryall and Weston-super-Mare’s Dan Toogood, a former Mendip Spring member, tied third on 146.

Back-to-form Goodwin added 73 in the afternoon to take second spot on 145, three shots behind Licata.

Langdon made a successful return to the Gloucester and Somerset PGA following a couple of years away in Wiltshire.

He lines up alongside Licata and Ryall in the PGA Inter-County Championship qualifier at Tiverton in September as the dual counties aim to reach the final for the second year running.

The top 16 from the OOM qualify for the next event, the Marston’s Matchplay at Chipping Sodbury at the end of August when Licata will defend his title on his new home course.