Relieved Omelia finds the key to beating Brady

Like the condemned man who'd discovered the key and unlocked his own cell door, pre-championship favourite Bryan Omelia was suitably contrite as he walked off the 18th green - still very much alive - after a Trojan fight with his old college buddy Eamonn Brady in the second round of the Irish Amateur Close Championship, sponsored by Bank of Ireland, at The Island Golf Club in Donabate last evening.

So many of the game's big names had fallen by the wayside, in a remarkable national championship, that Omelia had no godgiven right to believe he would survive when he stared down the narrow 14th fairway, at a time when he was three down, and watched his ball kick into the righthandside rough. "I didn't think I could go deep enough within myself to survive," admitted Omelia.

Yet, from such desperate circumstances, Omelia contrived to produce a finish that enabled him to win four successive holes and eventually beat Brady on the last green to claim a place in the last 16. On another day of surprises, many of his fellow internationals had failed to negotiate such a route into the third round. Among yesterday's casualties were Garth McGimpsey, the East of Ireland champion, Walker Cup squad member David Dunne and Andrew McCormick. The only current internationals remaining in the event are Omelia and twotime champion Eddie Power.

Omelia's prospects didn't look too bright, though, in a tremendous battle with Brady. Brady was three up at the turn, and Omelia was forced to find a birdie to halve the 10th and then sink an eight footer for par to share the 11th. Standing on the 14th tee, he was still three down. His drive on that short Par 4, known as the "Old Clubhouse," found a hanging lie in the right rough, but the Newlands player conjured up a great approach, hitting a five iron to eight feet. He sank the birdie putt.

Then, he won the 15th with another birdie and some light appeared at the end of the tunnel. Omelia went level for the first time since the fourth hole when he won the short 16th, where Brady was over the back and fluffed his chip, and went ahead when ramming in a 30-footer for birdie at the 17th. The last was shared in bogey fives (after both threeputted from an impossible position), and Omelia was appropriately humble in his assessment of the match.

"We're too good of friends to be involved in something like that," said Omelia, who reached the last 16 of the British Amateurs in Muirfield last week. So, Omelia avoided becoming another casualty in a championship which has produced more than its fair share of big name victims. McGimspey was bundled out at the 19th in the first round by teenager Aaron Lundy (who was subsequently beaten in the second round by Baltray's Brian Ronan), while Dunne lost out in the first round to Enda McMenamin and McCormick was a second-round loser to Cork bank official Denis Dudley.

Power, meanwhile, avoided a first-round defeat by beating Alex Meharg of Scrabo at the first sudden death hole in the first round and then defeating Conor Mallon by 2 and 1, while another impressive performance was given by Danny Coyle, a student in Berkeley University in California, in beating current North of Ireland champion Michael Sinclair by 4 and 3 in the second-round. However, it was Gary Cullen, from the neighbouring Beaverstown club, who produced the shot of the day. In his first-round win over Declan Quilligan, Cullen scored a hole-in-one at the ninth with a six-iron.