Winner’s bag: Corey Conners, Valero Texas Open

SYDNEY — No one was more surprised by who won the Australian Open than the champion himself. Cameron Davis came from six shots behind going into the final round to win by one stroke on Sunday, shooting a 7-under 64 that included a birdie on the 18th and an eagle after holing a 100-meter approach shot. The star draw cards — Jason Day and Jordan Spieth — were top 10 finishers, but weren’t holding the Stonehaven Cup aloft at the end of the day. “It’s a little bit numb at the moment,” Davis said. “I just didn’t expect to be in this situation.” Davis started his round six groups ahead of the final one that included Day. When Davis finished with his 64, he had to wait more than an hour, most of it taken up at the practice range in case there was a playoff. “I didn’t even see a leaderboard before I hit that putt on the last hole,” Davis said. “So I made that, and I thought, `I’ll be up around the top’. But to come into the scorers’ hut and see where I was at, I was kind of blown away. I had no idea I’d be there.” Adding to the surprise: Davis lost his card to play on the Mackenzie Tour in Canada this year and before Sunday, had never had a top-10 finish as a professional. And last week he missed the cut in the New South Wales Open. The 22-year-old Australian finished with an 11-under total of 273 at The Australian Golf Club, where gusty and unpredictable winds made low scoring difficult. Sweden’s Jonas Blixt, who missed a 12-foot birdie putt on the 18th that would have forced a playoff, shot 68 to finish tied for second with Matt Jones (68) while third-round leader Day was fifth after a 73, three strokes behind. “It was quite a simple putt, maybe a little longer than I would have wanted,” Blixt said. “I thought it was a lot quicker than it was.” Davis, whose eagle came on the 12th hole when he hit his approach about 10 meters past the flag, then watched it spin back and into the cup, also qualified for The Open next July at Carnoustie. The Australian Open was the first of 15 events in 10 countries that will make up The Open qualifying series for 2018. Also qualifying were Blixt and Jones, among the top three players not already eligible. Day double-bogeyed the ninth hole after the most unfortunate of circumstances — his shot out of a fairway bunker hit the lip of the bunker, caromed left across the fairway and into a water hazard. He was making his first tournament appearance in Australia since 2013. “I just didn’t play my best and obviously it’s not great to shoot 2-over par on the final round when you’ve got the lead,” Day said. “Cameron came back and played a wonderful round of golf.” Spieth, attempting to win his third Australian Open in four years, finished with 4-under 67, including an eagle on the last. He was eighth, five strokes behind Davis. “It was a great finish,” Spieth said. “I really felt like I shot 62 today and it was 67, I had so many looks.” He was non-committal about making another trip down under next year. “I’d love to explore it,” Spieth said. “It’s just a matter of, like I’ve said every year, I try and figure out what’s going on the next week, let alone a year from now.” Spieth will play next week at the Hero World Challenge in the Bahamas, where tournament host Tiger Woods will make his return to competitive golf. NOTES: Jones’ trip to Carnoustie next year could come with some concern back home. “I can’t wait but I just hope that our baby doesn’t come that week. My wife (Melissa) is due at that time, so we will have to see what happens.” … Davis will be playing his first major at Carnoustie. But just to bring him back down to earth, he’ll head to Arizona next week for the final stage of the Web.com Tour qualifying school.

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Seamus Power says most people don’t realize that there is an Irish language. Or, Gaeilge, to be more precise. “I sometimes tell people and they think I’m kidding,” he says. “They think it’s just a way of speaking English with a funny Irish accent.” Actually, Gaeilge is the first and official language of Ireland, recognized by the European Union. Irish uses the same alphabet as other European countries and the United States, but the phonetics are very different. It also has its own font. Many of the words bear little resemblance to English or Spanish or other more common languages, Power says. Sentence structure is different from English, too. Instead of “My name is Seamus Power,” he says the Irish way would be “Seamus Power is my name.” So in Gaeilge, he would write: Seamus de paor ainm dom. (The phonetics simply don’t translate well on paper or the Internet, though, so we won’t try here.) English, with that “funny Irish accent” that Power mentioned, is spoken by the majority on the island and is also an official language. But there are several areas called Gaeltacht where Irish speakers predominate. “I don’t think Irish will ever go away,” Power says. “We’re very proud of having our own language.” Power was born in Waterford, Ireland and grew up playing golf against Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry. He started learning Irish, as most kids do, in what would be elementary school over here in the States. The classes continue until students graduate from high school. There are even summer camps where kids can go to improve their Irish. “So everyone’s got some level of it,” Power says. The 30-year-old Power, who came to the United States to play golf at East Tennessee State and now has a home in Charlotte, doesn’t get to speak Irish very much anymore. When he’s home in Ireland, though, he often hears Irish words used in English conversations – for example, someone might say “buachaill maith” instead of using the expression “good boy” or “good man.” “It’s funny because there’s different dialect even throughout Ireland in Irish,” Power says. “You kind of pick up where they come from when they speak Irish.” Power’s first name is the Irish word for James while Liam is a shortened version of William and Sean is John. At the Olympics last year, Power even gave his American caddy John Rathouz an Irish name – Sean Teach Francach (the latter two words translate to house rat). While Power says he was a pretty good student of the Irish language, his best courses were math, chemistry and physics. He also has a keen interest in history and enjoys reading about World War I and World War II, as well as Irish, American and European affairs. “I read more history books than I do novels,” Power says. “When I finish a novel, it’s funny, but I feel like I didn’t really get much out of it where I feel like I’m always learning when I read a history book.” Irish history is particularly rich, dating back to the Stone Age. He doesn’t remember concentrating that much on the subject in high school but his interest has grown in recent years. “There’s so many significant time periods it’s unbelievable,” Power said. “When I came to the U.S. and went to history class, there was like two history classes, one was pre-1865 and one was post, and I was like, this is fantastic. “I remember back in Ireland, we started 10,000 B.C., when we started learning history and we go from there. … I didn’t study it particularly in school. I was okay. I never focused on it. “But in the last few years, I just always enjoyed it, I tried to learn some stuff, see what happened, see what the world could have been and the reason it is where it is now, that sort of stuff.” And the Irish language is a big part of that long history. “Ireland is very proud,” Power said with a smile. “Very stubborn history. So, language is something we would like to have, like to hang on. “We don’t always use it. If someone tried to take it away, everyone would be up in arms about it.”

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