WHEN you’re struggling to recall how long it has been since your last tournament win, it is fair to say the taste of victory is long overdue.

For Poole golfer Hayley Davis, that long wait has finally come to an end in spectacular fashion.

The 26-year-old stormed through the field last week to claim her first professional title at the Bossey Ladies Championship, hitting a hole-in-one along the way, eventually winning by seven shots.

Davis has come close on numerous occasions to getting over the line since leaving the amateur ranks and turning pro in 2015, including second, third and fourth-placed finishes earlier this year.

But Bossey in France provided the scene of her greatest triumph to date, hitting 14 birdies and an eagle on the way to posting two rounds of 65, before playing sensibly to get the job done on the final day.

Asked when she had last finished top of the leaderboard, the Ferndown Golf Club-affiliated star told the Daily Echo: “I don’t remember to be honest with you.

“It was an amateur thing sometime, I don’t know.

“I’ve been playing really well at the moment. I’ve sort of been in contention.

“I played the course (at Bossey) last year, so I already knew what it was about. It’s just a hard golf course so I just thought every shot I really need to focus and know where I want to be because it’s tough off the tee and then tough greens.

“The first day everything just sort of fell into place. I played well, made some good putts and then the second day was a bit of a similar day, I just had a bit of a faster start and kept it going.”

Not only did Davis make a faster start on day two, but she also achieved a career-first hole-in-one at the fourth.

And having had her mum Samantha caddying for the week, it made for a special moment, even if she did miss out on a potential star prize.

“There was a car (to win) on the hole, but apparently it was just on the last day, so I didn’t get it,” Davis explained.

“But I got a nice plaque for it.

“It’s the first hole-in-one I’ve got in competition, so that was cool. I started birdie, birdie so I thought ‘oh this is good’. I was just hitting good shots and then on the fourth hole hit another good shot and it just happened to go in.

“It was like this could be that sort of moment where this could be my week actually – I’ve never got a hole-in-one before and now I’m getting one.

“We saw it go in. It was funny because the day before I hit a good shot into it, but it went to six feet and I was like ‘this is the easiest pin for me to get it’. Then the next day it was into wind a little bit and I was indecisive with clubs, then stuck with the longer one and then it just ended up one bounce and rolled in.”

Davis’s goal remains to secure a spot on the main LET tour, which she can do by ending the year well on the LET Access Series.

With the win in Bossey, Davis has now returned to the top of the order of merit with just five events to go this season.

Asked if she believed it was only a matter of time before she clinched a pro win, Davis said: “Definitely. Two of the girls that were in the top three with me (in the rankings), they both got a win so I was right up there and hadn’t got my win yet. So that was quite good. And obviously now that I’ve got it, I’m at the top again so that’s nice and it created a bit of a gap as well between one to five really. If I can keep that going for the next couple of events then that will give me a good place for the last few to hopefully know that I’m comfortably going to make it.”

Davis, who made her major debut at the US Open in May, is next due back in LET action at the Tipsport Czech Ladies Open, which begins in Liten on Friday.

Despite missing the cut during the major in Charleston after ending on 18 over par, Davis enjoyed being a part of the tournament.

She said: “The experience was amazing to be honest. I played better than the score as well. Just being out there makes me want to get back out there. It’s motivation to be like, this is where I want to be.”