THE unhelpful clash of dates which pits the Scottish Hydro Challenge on the European Challenge Tour in Aviemore against the Allied Surveyors Scottish Amateur championship at Royal Troon this week will not be allowed to happen in future years, event organisers have insisted.
According to Iain Stoddart, co-promoter of the Scottish Challenge as well as the managing director of Bounce sports management, the only Challenge Tour event held in Scotland is expected to move to a new, and hopefully stable, date in June of next y
ear.
Since it was first mounted at Murcar in the first week in July of 2006, the Scottish Challenge has been a moveable feast. At the MacDonald Cardrona near Peebles, the tournament was held in early August in 2007 and at the same venue in late June of last year.
"This year we were the victim of circumstances," explained Stoddart. "The clash with the Scottish Amateur wasn't ideal and it won't happen again. But when you are dealing with amateur and professional schedules, it can be difficult to get everything to fit."
Hamish Grey, chief executive of the Scottish Golf Union, which runs the Scottish Amateur, added: "It's an unfortunate clash which, as I understand it, was unavoidable this year. But it won't happen again. We had those discussions earlier this year and that's all I can really say."
While suitable dates are always hard to find in a crowded golf calendar, and it's often awkward to marry the demands of both amateur and professional schedules – as recently as 2005, the highlight of the amateur season, the Walker Cup match between the USA and Great Britain and Ireland in Chicago, was pitched in the same week as the US PGA championship at Baltusrol – the truth is that Scottish golf is in no position to undersell the merits of either the Scottish Amateur or the Scottish Challenge.
Quite apart from competing for limited coverage in the media at a time when the build-up to the new football season is gathering steam, both tournaments are significant events for the future of the game in this country.
This is true in as much as the Scottish Amateur offers elite amateurs an opportunity on an Open championship venue to compete at a high level while the Scottish Challenge will give a chance to aspiring professionals at Spey Valley golf club to pit their wits against rivals of the calibre of Paul Lawrie, the 1999 champion golfer at Carnoustie.
If the tournaments had been allocated different weeks, then there would also have been playing opportunities for half-a-dozen of Scotland's leading amateurs to enhance their experience of top level competition by taking part in both events.
Alas, when the Scottish Challenge was dated to start on Thursday of this week and the Scottish Amateur got underway yesterday, the opportunity for someone of the calibre of Gavin Dear, a member of Scotland's World and European team champions, to further his golfing education with the pros was removed.
These are testing times for Scottish golf, with no Scottish players ranked in the world's top 100, and no Scot since 2005 finishing inside the top 40 at the Open championship. The gap between achievement in the amateur game and under-achievement in the professional ranks has never been wider in Scotland. Because of this slump, there are obvious concerns about the lack of joined-up thinking in the game's structure, which isn't eased when notable Scottish tournaments are held in the same week.
One of the biggest problems facing the home of golf lies in how to develop the talent at professional level which is still coming through the amateur ranks. If things are to improve, Dean Robertson, a former Tour pro who now coaches Europe's Palmer Cup side, believes up and coming amateurs must be allocated a broader network of support once they join the professionals.
As Peter Dawson, the secretary of the Royal and Ancient, observed last week in response to a question about the uncertain future of Scottish golf: "The Scottish amateurs won the World Amateur Team championship and the European Amateur Team championship during the last 12 months. So, they're on top of the world in the amateur game. Over to them is all I can say."
It goes without saying, therefore, that Scotland can hardly afford to squander any playing opportunities for the emerging amateur elite among the professionals when the need for the next generation of golfers to make a mark has never been greater.
Relief all round as Lyle lets his clubs do the talking at SunningdaleIT WAS a blessed relief for Scottish golf when Sandy Lyle let his clubs do the talking at Sunningdale in the Senior Open at the weekend when he posted four scores of par or lower and secured 13th place in what was a distinguished field.
After a week of mud-slinging at Turnberry, when Lyle's frustration at not being awarded the Ryder Cup captaincy drew him into an unsavoury war of words with Colin Montgomerie, the former Masters and Open champion returned to doing what he does best, and refrained from taking any further digs at his compatriot.
If Lyle's comments ended up hurting himself more than Montgomerie, it could be that the public airing of the controversial incident at the Indonesian Open four years ago, when the Scot mistakenly replaced his ball in an improved position, will work to the Ryder Cup captain's advantage.
Although the Open was hardly the ideal backdrop for Lyle to make an accusation of cheating, perhaps it was better now than the week of the match itself next year for the spotlight to fall on Jakarta again. And whatever else may be said about last week's events, Montgomerie's diplomacy went a long way to explaining why he got the job at Celtic Manor and Lyle didn't.
My Irish colleague, Dermot Gilleece, incidentally, drew a shrewd analogy between how Lyle threw more bumbling coals on the flames of controversy at Turnberry by agreeing to answer questions after reading a prepared statement and the cool way Seve Ballesteros defused a row with Jaime Patino, the owner of Valderrama, in the Nineties.
After reading a short, prepared statement, Seve said with a faint smile: "There will be no questions, only answers."
Calcavecchia birdie blitz keeps oldies in spotlightIT MAY turn out to be a trick of the summer light, but the notion golf is at least as much an old man's game as a youngster's fiefdom was further underlined at the weekend. Not only by the quality of the golf played in the British Senior Open at Sunningdale but also by Mark Calcavecchia's record run of nine consecutive birdies at the Canadian Open.
In the aftermath of the spell cast by Tom Watson, aged 59, over Turnberry for 71 holes at the Open, the lure of the Senior Open, where established names of the calibre of Greg Norman, Fred Funk, Bernhard Langer and Loren Roberts were vying for the title, was far stronger than an anonymous staging of the SAS Masters in Malmo.
If you're a Scot, you knew the time warp was working at Sunningdale because one of our own, Sam Torrance, was a contender after compiling a fabulous second round of 65. In the end, a 71 on Saturday left the Largs golfer with too much ground to make up. Still, his closing 67 for fifth place and a cheque for nearly 67,000 stirred the kind of local interest which hasn't been seen in the Open championship since Colin Montgomerie was runner-up to Tiger Woods at St Andrews in 2005.
One of the golden oldies who made a mark on the Ailsa – only a disappointing third round of 77 dropped the 49-year-old back to a share of 27th place in the Open – Calcavecchia, pictured, kept up the good work in Oakville, Canada, by setting a new PGA Tour record of nine consecutive birdies. His remarkable run came between the par 3 12th, his third, and continued to the par 5 second.
With his 15-year-old son, Eric, shouldering the bag, the teenager was asked what he thought of his father's golf. "Pretty cool," he volunteered.
"Man of many words over there," noted Dad.
