DOUGHERTY VICTORY PROVES VALUE OF EGU COACHING

Nick Dougherty, the teenager Nick Faldo believes is his mirror image, started 2001 in great style by winning the Lake Macquarie tournament in Australia. The 18-year-old Lancastrian birdied the second extra hole of a sudden death playoff at the Belmont club to pip Australian Luke Hickmott after the pair had tied on 272, 16 under par, a record for the tournament.

They couldn't be separated over the first playoff hole but at the second, the par-four 17th, Dougherty rolled in his birdie putt to bring the title back to England for the first time since Ricky Willison in 1991 when Dougherty was just eight years old.

David Griffiths, from Hertfordshire, the other half of the official England team, finished joint sixth, five shots back, along with Essex-based England
international colleague Richard McEvoy. Together Dougherty and Griffiths'
lifted the Nations Trophy won last year by Luke Donald and Paul Casey.

Dougherty's triumph coupled with victory in November with Gary Wolstenholme
in Argentina is yet another example of the results of the new intense
coaching programme set up by the EGU. Early pro success for Simon Dyson and a rejuvenated Justine Rose combining with World Championship success for
English Juniors and Senior players like Luke Donald and Paul Casey further
demonstrates the success of the system.

Eighteen-year-old Dougherty, who had rounds of 66 68 and 70, went into the
final day in joint fourth place, two strokes off the lead. But a battling 68 saw him catch Hickmott, who returned 70, to set up that exciting finale.

Dougherty, from the Shaw Hill club, has already achieved much in a short space of time. He won the individual title in the World Boys Junior Golf Team championships in Japan in 1999, has been a boy international since 1997, and made his senior England debut a year ago against France.

He has also won the Faldo Junior Series three times and is a member of the
Walker Cup training squad from which the team will be selected to defend the
trophy in America in August. This win will strengthen Nick's chances of
making the team, while he is being tipped by Faldo as a star in the making.