Gallacher back in the swing of things
By Jim Black AT GULLANE
STEPHEN GALLACHER rekindled his Open hopes yesterday with a blemish-free third round at Gullane.
The Ryder Cup Scot posted a 65 in the ASI Scottish Open to make significant strides up the leaderboard on the back of his lowest round for five months.
Five birdies enabled the 43-year-old from Linlithgow to equal his second-round tally at the Maybank Championship in February after missing the cut in three of his previous four tournaments.
He will require to go low again today in the $7million Rolex Series event to claim one of the three Carnoustie spots up for grabs.
But the three-time European Tour winner has at least given himself a chance of a ninth appearance at the world’s oldest major after missing out for the past two years. Gallacher, who has slipped to 296th in the world, sees signs for optimism after carding rounds of 70, 66 and 65 for a highly respectable nine-under-par total. ‘I’ve been struggling, to be honest,’ said Gallacher (left). ‘I have been working hard on my technique this week, trying to make my bad shots better. ‘I only hit a couple of wayward drives, but they were just on the side of the fairway, so they were playable, hence the reason I was bogey-free. ‘When you are nine shots behind, you have to try to go as low as you can over the weekend and then see what happens, and this is a good score.’
Gallacher was also given a nod of approval by his 17-year-old son and caddie, Jack, who declared: ‘He’s starting to get better.
‘We’re getting there. It’s been quite an eye-opening experience for me. I’m usually the one on the outside of the ropes looking on and now I’m in the middle of it.
‘My dad just said: “Do you want to do it?” and the next day I left school. It was quite a whirlwind, but I knew I wanted to do something in golf. But I’m not looking too far ahead.’
Duncan Stewart had hoped to build on a second-round 64 in his quest to regain a full European Tour card, but the 34-year-old from Grantown-on-Spey carded a 71 to slip back to five under.