Graeme McDowell maintained his fine form of recent weeks by taking the individual award in the Simon Bolivar Cup in Caracas last weekend. McDowell and Close champion Gavin McNeill formed a two-member Irish team in the tournament, in which they were runners-up to England.

The Rathmore international, who was a member of the victorious British and Irish Walker Cup team at Sea Island in August, has returned to the University of Alabama for which he was victorious in a recent US collegiate event. And a measure of his Caracas form was that he was the only player among the leading finishers to break 70 in all four rounds.

England, represented by Gary Wolstenholme and Graeme Clark, finished six strokes clear of Ireland at the top of the leaderboard with a combined total of 548. But Ireland were no fewer than 15 strokes clear of Spain, in third place.

Bray's Alan Murray, representing the University of Toledo, won the individual title at the 49er Collegiate Classic in California with a five-under-par 54-hole total of 208.