Calendar change has Opens at Easter

The boys’ and girls’ Open championships take place in Angus this week as part of Scottish Golf’s new-look calendar.

After the governing body announced a number of changes to national championships, the strokeplay events are being played on the same Easter holiday dates, today to Friday, with Monifieth welcoming the boys and Montrose staging the girls.

The Scottish Boys matchplay has moved to the school summer holidays, to be played alongside the Scottish Girls, running concurrently at Scotscraig and Drumoig from June 30 to July 5.

In total, 216 entries were received for this week’s boys’ strokeplay championship with the handicap ballot for the 144-player field falling at 4.3.

The girls’ event also received a strong entry, 134, with the ballot for the 102-player field coming at 7.2.

Jamie Stewart, the 2016 Scottish Boys Order of Merit champion, and last year’s Scottish Boys winner Eric McIntosh will face competition from players from England, France, Germany, Belgium and Bulgaria.

Fraser Munro, head of events at Scottish Golf, said: “We look forward to a great week at Monifieth and Montrose and thank both host venues for once again welcoming Scottish Golf.

“The number of entries for both events was really encouraging, as they were for the Helen Holm Scottish Women’s Open Championship later this month.”

He added: “While this has been a good start, we would like to see more entries for the Scottish Women’s Amateur Championship at Royal Aberdeen in early June to keep the positive momentum going.”