Jarryd Dillas didn't just have to beat Nick Mansell to win the Amateur Match Play Championship at Mid Ocean on Saturday.

He also had 50 knot winds, a continuous driving rain that seeped through protective clothing, and his own mental fragility to overcome as well.

In the end though he conquered all that the day threw at him, coming from four down to eventually win a mammoth 36-hole encounter two and one when Mansell could only match his bogey at the par-three 17.

By the time the match eventually finished at 5.36 p.m. the pair had been battling each other, and the elements, for more than seven hours. It had long since ceased to be a game of golf. In a war of attrition, survival was the only objective.

"When you're playing in conditions like that it's just tough," said Dillas. "We didn't seem to halve any holes, either I was winning, or he was winning, and it was just a case of trying to survive. You can hit good shots and they just weren't going anywhere, and it became all about survival, and it was just about getting one lower than your opponent.

"You like to play the course, but you couldn't yesterday. I changed my putting stance, I got really wide, just to keep it as stable as possible. Balls were rolling on the greens and oscillating a lot, it was just a matter of staying patient really, because it was such a long day."

The handshakes and congratulations at the end were all very different from the first time the group had been through 17. In the first round, a scuffed second shot into the greenside bunker eventually led to Dillas losing the hole and going four down after a disintegration in his game that begun on 14.

A missed three-footer at 14 put Mansell one ahead, and the Ocean View superintendent was three-up after 16 when Dillas sent a chip deep into the green, and then raced his downhill putt back past the hole.

Problems at 17 soon followed, and when Dillas reached the green in two but still failed to win at 18, after he sent another putt racing past the hole, his angry reaction seemed to suggest that the only question remaining was how quickly Mansell could wrap things up after lunch.

As it was Dillas' caddy, Craig Brown, managed to turn things around during the brief lunch break, and the momentum shifted almost immediately after the re-start. Dillas won three of the first four holes with steady, if not spectacular golf, that characterised the nature of the day's play.

"I was pretty down, Nick kind of ran off a stretch of holes and it turned the match," said Dillas. "He was getting away pretty fast, and with the weather and everything I was getting pretty down, but Craig did a good job of levelling me out, reminding me we had a long way to go, and just telling me to pick a few holes on the front nine where we could get back into it.

"I got a quick bite to eat and then went and did some putting to try and sort that out, because that had been so bad on the first 18, and then just tried to keep it simple, keep the ball in front of us, and try and make some pars if we could."

Back at all-square after winning the sixth with a regulation par, Dillas then went behind immediately after, but battled back to win the next two holes and go one ahead at the turn.

The pair then traded blows for the next few holes, either winning or losing, never halving, and the match swung one way, and then the other. In all that though it was Mansell who now gave the impression of scrambling to stay in touch. While Dillas' greater power had been marginalised in the first round, it eventually began to tell as the day wore on.

Dillas finally moved ahead for the final time at the par-four 12, chipping his third shot to within two feet for an easy par, and when Mansell missed his six-footer, Dillas was back in front. Fittingly it was at 14, the start of all his problems in the first round, where Dillas wrapped up the match.

Mansell found himself in trouble off the tee, and a nine-iron to the heart of the green from Dillas set up a par that was good enough to win the hole. The pair then matched each other shot for shot over the last few holes, and when they both bogeyed 17 the match was over.

"If you look at the scoring, the numbers probably weren't that great, but it was just so difficult, and I'm so happy to have come out on top," said Dillas. "I really thought Nick was going to run away with it for a while, but the break did me a lot of good."

In the Ladies Championship Katrin Burnie ran out a seven and six winner over Tracy Nash in a match that was a lot closer than the result might suggest.

The pair were seperated by just a single hole at the half way stage, but Burnie made the most of her opportunities in the second round to beat her Mid Ocean colleague to the title.

Nash also finished the day with a black eye for her troubles, playing out of the sand in her first round, her shot hit the lip of a bunker and cannoned back into her face, cutting her just below the right eye.