Ilonen Secures Irish Open Title


Finland's Mikko Ilonen closed with a 1-under 70 Sunday to record a wire-to-wire win in the Irish Open. The European Tour event took place on the Deerpark Course at Fota Island Resort in County Cork.

Beginning the final round one shot ahead of England's Danny Willett, the 34-year-old Ilonen recorded two birdies on the front nine to make the turn in 2-under 34, then carded all pars through the 17th hole before a bogey on the last.

Ilonen ended up at 13-under 271, a stroke clear of Italy's Edoardo Molinari, who carded a 67, and two in front of Willett (71), Matthew Baldwin (69) and Sweden's Kristoffer Broberg (69).

Ilonen tipped his cap to German Martin Kaymer, who routed the field in last week's U.S. Open at Pinehurst by eight strokes. "It was very much a Martin Kaymer-inspired win," said Ilonen, who earned his fourth victory on the European Tour.

"I sent a message to him last week that I really enjoyed watching the U.S. Open. I very rarely enjoy watching it, I would rather play, but Martin's win inspired me. I was thinking about winning this tournament from midday Thursday, basically. Somehow the course looked easy to me and I felt we were going to see some crazy scores.

"I had a low one on Thursday to start with, and it was something that I was expecting, but I could see from the faces and comments of other players that they weren't expecting it. I had a number in my head all week that I tried to get to and I missed it by a mile."

Sharing sixth at 274 were Sweden's Magnus A. Carlsson (69) and Northern Ireland's Graeme McDowell (71). Tied for eighth at 275 were Ross Fisher, Michael Hoey, Chris Wood, Richard Finch, Gregory Bourdy and Gary Stal.

Though Ilonen didn't his best Sunday, he managed to persevere. "It's been a hard day's work to keep that lead and luckily no one really made a run out of the last couple of groups," he said. "I played good enough to make some birdies and I did not have to."

For all the scores, visit http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2014/tournamentid=2014048/leaderboard/index.html.