One has held his nerve to win a play-off for the Open and the other has captained Celtic to various footballing conquests but stick Paul Lawrie and Tom Boyd on a golf course watching their sons do battle in the Scottish Boys Championship and you almost expected them to nip into the halfway house at Murcar and order some Valium.
“Watching Thomas playing golf is more nerve-wracking than playing in front of 60,000 at Celtic Park,” said Boyd senior with a smile after his son, Thomas, was edged out at the 19th hole by Michael Lawrie.
It had been an intriguing, keenly fought tussle on a dreich day in the Granite City and Boyd, a four-handicapper at Bothwell Castle, almost claimed a notable scalp as he moved into a one hole lead through 17 holes after Lawrie, a quarter-finalist a year ago, stumbled to a brace of bogeys at 15 and 16.
The young Aberdonian showed his fighting spirit, though, and dinked a super wedge to within three-feet on the last for a birdie which squared the tie before plonking another fine approach to six-feet on the first extra-hole to clinch a hard-earned win.
“Having reached the quarter-finals last year, I’d love to do better here and this was a tough match to get through,” said 17-year-old Lawrie, who will embark on his PGA training later this season as he looks to follow his famous faither into the professional ranks.
Boyd, who was on the books with Hamilton Academical before switching his attention to a different ball game, certainly enjoyed his first appearance in a national championship. “It’s not often you get a former Open champion watching you,” he said.
That particular Open champion is used to peering on nervously from the sidelines. “But it doesn’t get any easier and I went through all this with my older son, Craig, in this event,” added Lawrie.
In the other early encounters, Nairn’s Sandy Scott, the No 1 seed, eased to a 2&1 win over Greg Cessford but Ross Callan, runner-up in last year’s final, fell at the first hurdle.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here