Golf: Dundas secures his final chance: Tim Glover reports from Carnoustie

STEPHEN DUNDAS, an 18-year-old Glaswegian, will play Bradley Dredge, a 19-year-old Welshman, in the 36-hole final of the Amateur Championship today. Both had convincing victories in the semi-finals yesterday afternoon, Dundas defeating Stephen Gallacher 4 and 3 and Dredge putting out Mathew Stanford by the same score.

Dundas, a member at Haggs Castle, is the first Scotsman to reach the final since Colin Montgomerie - he was defeated by Jose-Maria Olazabal - in 1984. Both Dundas and Dredge make their debuts in the home internationals in two weeks' time. First, however, Dundas has to travel to Texas to register for his second term at Midland Junior College. He gained a scholarship last January, ostensibly to study psychology and business management. In Texas he has been able to play and practise golf every day of the week and his game has been raised considerably.

The bespectacled Dundas, 6ft 3in, established an early superiority over Gallacher, the 17-year-old nephew of the Ryder Cup captain, Bernard Gallacher. Dundas was two up after two, four up after eight. Earlier Gallacher, who won the Scottish Amateur Championship last month, knocked out another young Scot, Hugh McKibbin, in the quarter-finals, staging yet another splendid rally over Carnoustie's imposing closing holes. McKibbin went one up at the 15th and Gallacher, as he had been doing all week, won the last three holes. At lunchtime he admitted to feeling tired after a hard week and a restless night. In the semi-finals it showed although he worried Dundas by winning the ninth, 10th and 11th and at that point he was only one down.

'I was getting pretty desperate,' Dundas said. At the 13th he struck a crucial blow by rolling in a putt from 45 feet for a winning two. Gallacher's momentum was lost. At the 14th Gallacher's second shot found one of the infamous bunkers called the Spectacles because they look like a pair of glasses. You do not need assistance to spot them. Gallacher failed to get his ball out at the first attempt and ultimately had to concede the hole. Dundas won the next as well to clinch victory.

Dredge, from the Bryn Meadows club near Newport, was also four up after eight in his semi-final. Stanford, from Bath, was particularly impressive in defeating Ian Garbutt. Most of the outward nine are inevitably into the wind yet in the quarter-finals Stanford went to the turn in 33, outstanding scoring by any standards.

However, he could not reproduce that form in the afternoon. Dredge, on the other hand, was remorselessly accurate. He did not make a single bogey and did not lose a single hole. He took the lead at the fourth where he played a superb chip and went two up with an immaculate par at the sixth, a hole of 575 yards into the teeth of the wind. To reach the green requires three massive, and deadly accurate, blows.

Stanford fell further behind when he missed a four-foot putt at the seventh and hit his tee-shot at the short eighth out of bounds, by less than a foot, over a fence on the left. He conceded the hole to go four down and Dredge kept his foot firmly on the Englishman's jugular.

(Photograph omitted)