The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Luke Donald and former footballer Jamie Redknapp enjoy a joke during the Dunhill Links Championship yesterday. The two play at Kingsbarns today. Picture: Getty Images.
Former heavyweight champion proves popular with the crowds
Boxing fans went the distance yesterday with former heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in Carnoustie.
The Ukrainian, known as Dr Steelhammer, proved incredibly popular with the crowds who followed his round in Angus on the second day of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
Klitschko is one of the many celebrity amateur golfers in this week’s pro-am tournament, which is being played over the three courses of the Old Course, Kingsbarns and Carnoustie.
He said he turned to golf to discover why he was knocked out in one of his usual sport’s biggest upsets.
The former world heavyweight champion lost his title to unfavoured South African Corrie Sanders in 2003 and believed the game could hold the key to overcoming his defeat.
“Corrie was a golfer and I wanted to understand why he was faster and hitting harder than my other opponents,” he said.
“I wanted to understand and study Corrie better. It’s like in chess: to see what they see, sit where they sit.”
Klitschko said he had no plans to take up golf professionally after retiring from boxing following his defeat to Anthony Joshua.
He said: “Golf is probably the most complicated sport you could choose to play and I’m so happy I’m not doing it for a living.”
Fifty Shades of Grey star Jamie Dornan, Downton Abbey actor Matthew Goode and Baywatch actress Kelly Rohrbach were also playing at Carnoustie.
Dornan returned to the Carnoustie Links where he watched the 1999 Open as a 17-year-old.
He looked on from the gallery when Frenchman Jean van de Velde blew a three-shot lead on the final hole. “It’s great to be back,” he said. “I shouldn’t have been able to play but a movie I was filming in Dublin was postponed so that freed me up to be here.”
Goode was covering up with sunscreen because his next film role is a vampire and he said he “couldn’t go back with a suntan”.
Played over the Old Course St Andrews, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns, the event incorporates two separate competitions – an individual tournament for the leading professionals and a team championship in which the pros are paired with amateur golfers.
Also among the amateurs taking part are musicians Ronan Keating, Brian McFadden, Tom Chaplin, Dave Farrell, Huey Lewis, Mike Rutherford and Tico Torres and film actor Greg Kinnear.
Three sporting knights – Sir Ian Botham, Sir Anthony (AP) McCoy and Sir Steve Redgrave – head an impressive line-up of sports stars, including rugby’s Fourie du Preez, Rob Louw, Paul O’Connell and Brian O’Driscoll, footballers Luis Figo and Jamie Redknapp, cricketers Shane Warne, Kevin Pietersen, Mark Boucher, Jacques Kallis and Mark Nicholas.