It’s been 47 years since Muirfield last staged the Scottish Amateur Championship and Jack McDonald has been getting an illuminating history lesson on it.
“My grandpa has told me a couple of times that he won the Scottish Amateur, but I didn’t know his win came at Muirfield,” said the 22-year-old from Barassie ahead of this week’s championship over the East Lothian links.
McDonald’s grandfather is Gordon Cosh, a great golfing rival of the redoubtable Ronnie Shade back in the day, and the winner of the national title at Muirfield in 1968.
That success by Cowglen member Cosh ended Shade’s remarkable run of five successive Scottish Amateur wins. Here in 2015, McDonald, a beaten semi-finalist in the Amateur Championship at Carnoustie last month, is looking to add to the family silver.
“Of course, I’d love to follow him,” added the Walker Cup hopeful. “I’ve been playing pretty nicely this year. I’ve reached the quarter-finals the last two years so it would be good to go on another run.”
McDonald is one of 256 players competing in the knock-out competition and is joined in the draw by the 2012 champion Grant Forrest, the No 1 seed who lost in the final of the Amateur Championship a few weeks ago.
Greig Marchbank, Ewen Ferguson, Connor Syme and Graeme Robertson, all members of Scotland’s European Team Championship-winning side earlier this month, also tee-up as does talented teen Sandy Scott, the winner of last week’s Scottish Boys’ Strokeplay Championship at the Royal Burgess.
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