DESPITE questioning his preparation, Troy Neville has stood tall at the the Sunraysia District Golf Championships at Coomealla Golf Club at the weekend.
Neville said he was pleased with his performance considering he had not been able to practice as much as he would have liked in the lead-up to the competition.
“It was a great feeling winning,” he said. “But honestly, I wasn’t expecting too much going into it.
“I haven’t been doing a lot of practice since I changed jobs in the last 12 months.
“I’m sitting in a truck, so I don’t get much time during the week to practice.
“Going into the weekend, I was hoping to do well, but I was not expecting to do particularly well.”
Neville said he had a good first round, but the competition was neck and neck going into day two, so it was still anyone’s title.
“I was two down in the first round, and I was obviously still in the hunt, so I knew I had a chance at winning,” he said.
“When I handed my card in, I still didn’t really know if I had won because James Daly was still out on the course, so we had to wait to see what score he had.
“This is now the second time I have won, having won it in 2019, which was the first time I had won anything in an individual event around here.
“After winning, I sat inside with the guys I played with and had a couple of beers with them after, not anything too serious because I had to be out of bed at half-past-two in the morning.”
With good knowledge of the Coomealla Golf Course, Neville said that may of given him the edge over some of his opponents.
“I’m a club member at Coomella, so I know the course very well, and I’ve been playing it since I was 10 years old,” he said.
James Daly was runner-up with a gross of 150, four shots behind Neville on 146.
