Keating watches as Lee Westwood has hole-in-one at Carnoustie

ST ANDREWS, September 26, 2019 – Keating watches as Lee Westwood has hole-in-one at Carnoustie

Lee Westwood celebrated a hole-in-one towards the end of his opening round at Carnoustie – the 18th ace of his career and, remarkably, not the first he has had when partnering singer Ronan Keating!

Westwood admitted he was frustrated with his game when he came to the eighth hole – his 17th after starting on the 10th – and a purely-struck 6-iron sent the ball straight into the hole on the 189-yard par three. The team of Westwood and Keating ended day one on five-under-par.

It brought back memories of 2003 when Westwood had an albatross two on the 9th hole at Kingsbarns – a feat which took him into the lead and he went on to win the Championship that year.

“All of a sudden the wind just dropped and I didn’t think I could get it there with a 7-iron,” said Westwood. “I had been hitting good iron shots but nothing was dropping for me with the putter. Anyway, that was one way of taking putting out of contention!”

The hole-in-one enabled Westwood to finish with a first round 69, three-under-par, and he added: “What was nice was that I saw the ball all the way into the hole. Sometimes, when you have a blind shot, or an uphill hole, you can’t see it when the ball drops, but this rolled across the green and just caught the right edge. It was a nice swing and it came off lovely. That’s 18 holes-in-one overall, but I’ve had two playing with Ronan!”