The Courier & Advertiser (Fife Edition)
Still time for Open Scots numbers to grow, says Steve Scott. T2G
The apparent realignment of the golf season this year was more profound than we thought. In Scotland it seems June has been largely abandoned for top class golf. With the Amateur in Ireland this year (and England next), the Scottish Hydro Challenge at Aviemore on a sabbatical and the Scottish Amateur Strokeplay moved to August, what does your forlorn golf columnist do for sustenance?
There’s nothing for it but opportunistic miscellany.
Time still left for Open Scots
The happiest news of the weekend was that the recent performances of Robert MacIntyre, the admirable young European Tour rookie from Oban, have won him a place at the Open at Royal Portrush, and brought us a little closer to avoiding a historic low.
Bob’s second places at the British Masters and Made In Denmark event have secured him a “current form” exemption into his first major. With Paul Lawrie and Russell Knox already exempt, we have three now definitely in.
The all-time low Scottish representation in the Open was 2006 at Hoylake, when there were four – Lawrie, Colin Montgomerie, PGA champion Scott Drummond and Sandy Lyle. Sandy played out his exemption as a former champion last year at Carnoustie, and is no longer eligible.
So with only a month to go we have just three, but there’s time to pad that out. The Final Qualifying next week at Fairmont St Andrews has just three places up for grabs, but we usually get one Scot out of that route.
There are three places for players not otherwise exempt available from the next three European Tour events – Valderrama, the Irish Open and the Scottish Open. Nine spots, two of them from links(ish) courses ... you’d hope we’d get at least one qualifier out of those as well.
But there are no guarantees. Three Scots in the Open would certainly be a sobering new low.
It’s reflective of the fallow spell in pro golf we’ve recently endured. But that spell has already ended in this current season with MacIntyre’s performances and the two European Tour wins by David Law and Stephen Gallacher.
One suspects MacIntyre will be just one of a number of Scots who will get accustomed to teeing it up in the championship we all revere more than any other. Meanwhile, Ireland “rejoices”
Or so said my friend Brian Keogh, a massively enthusiastic chronicler of the Irish golf scene, on James Sugrue’s victory in the Amateur at Portmarnock.
The positivity of the Irish towards their young prospects often contrasts with the rather more critical eye we focus on ours. But an Irishman winning in Ireland for only the second time in the great old championship’s history is worth prolonged celebration.
Sugrue is a fine player with a healthy amateur pedigree. But winning the Amateur is a guarantee of nothing.
Just three Amateur champions have won majors since the First World War – Bobby Jones, Jose Maria Olazabal and Sergio Garcia.
You could argue persuasively that BEATEN finalists, in recent decades at least, have generally gone on to better things as pros – Trevor Immelman, Tommy Fleetwood, Colin Montgomerie, Bob May, Scott Hoch and Robert MacIntyre are in this group.
Which should give some succour to Euan Walker, the Barassie player
But there are no guarantees. Three Scots in the Open would certainly be a sobering new low
edged by Sugrue in the final at Portmarnock.
We wrote in this column last year that some of the recent crop of Scottish amateurs needed to kick on, and it seems Walker and Nairn’s Sandy Scott have done just that, close to nailing down Walker Cup spots at Hoylake later this year.
As an aside, Walker’s performance means that there has been a Scots presence in half of the last 16 finals of the Amateur.
Sadly only two have won – Stuart Wilson and Bradley Neil – but it does bring some perspective to the hysterical hand-wringing that greeted last year’s poor showing at Royal Aberdeen.
An important and prominent site
Macdonald Hotels, who had a sizeable footprint in golf, have sold the most prominent element of their portfolio in the sport, the famous Rusacks Hotel overlooking the 18th of the Old Course.
Along with the red facade of Hamilton Hall and the R&A clubhouse itself, Rusacks is one of three noble edifices framing golf’s most – in the only time I will use this hateful word – iconic setting.
It means, one would think, the rather ugly proposed extension of the hotel planned for the car park area will be dropped or at least – hopefully – redesigned by the new owners, a private equity group.
These things matter. The investigative journalist Martyn McLaughlin revealed that when Hamilton Hall was up for sale a decade ago Donald Trump nearly bought it, only to be stymied by RBS discovering no US bank would loan him a cent and wisely opting to follow suit.
Who knows what appalling affronts to taste Trump would have inflicted on it – the Turnberry fountain still makes one shudder – so thanks be Herb Kohler got there before him and sensitively restored it to what we see now.