On a day when everybody was talking and wincing about the complexities of Rory McIlroy's ruptured anterior talo-fibular ligament and associated joint capsule damage, Paul Lawrie was reflecting on the aches and pains that are a bit easier to pronounce: a sair back and neck.
"The injuries have all cleared up and the other week in Germany was the first time in well over a year that I felt I could actually hit the ball normally," said the 1999 Open champion, when asked about his general fettle ahead of this week's Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open at Gullane. "For the first time in 18 months, I feel 100 per cent physically."
At the age of 46, and with the niggles and strains that come with a career spent clattering away at a little dimpled ball, Lawrie is slowly beginning to take things a bit easier as he moves into his two favourite weeks of the season.
"I don't practice as much as I used to now on purpose," said Lawrie, who will be in St Andrews next week for the Open Championship. "As you get older you don't. I now hit a couple of hundred balls a day as opposed to six or seven hundred. The days of standing for four hours slogging balls are, thankfully, long behind me. These are the best two weeks of the year when you're Scottish. No other fortnight comes near for us. It's a massive two weeks but when they are both in Scotland it doesn't get much better."
It's now 16 years since Lawrie won the Claret Jug. It will be almost twice that since Sandy Lyle won his at Sandwich in 1985. The 57-year-old is playing on an invitation from the sponsors and he is relishing the opportunity to compete over the Gullane links he played on during his amateur days ahead of his pilgrimage to the home of golf for the Open next week.
"I am not going to Gullane and St Andrews simply to make up numbers, definitely not," he declared. "Gullane could be anybody's type of golf course and I've played it quite a few times. At the Open I feel I've got a chance to ruffle a few feathers. I still get the buzz and it's a course I am very familiar with and it's not all about power."
Lyle may not spend hours on the range these days but he believes that regular steps back in time with hickory clubs have aided his all round game. In this pursuit, you never stop learning. "It's unpredictable playing with a hickory shaft in terms of the distance control and shaping the ball," he added. "You have to get into a different mind-set of scrambling and thinking your way round and do a lot of chipping. It's fun and I've learned a lot from that."
Along with Lawrie and Lyle, the large Scots contingent was bolstered yesterday when Glasgow's Andrew McArthur was handed the final tournament invitation. Most of the talk had been about Bradley Neil, the rookie pro from Blairgowrie, or Jimmy Gunn, the Dornoch exile who made the cut in the US Open, getting the nod. In the complex area of invitations, where you're always likely to put someone's nose out, those in charge have went down the easy route of plucking the next highest Scot off the world rankings . "It's now up to me to go out and try to do it justice, and show people that it was a good decision to give me the invitation," said McArthur, the world No 269.
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