It was perhaps inevitable that the first national championship to be held at Gleneagles after the triumph of last year's Ryder Cup would be disrupted by the ruddy weather.
Back in sunny September, the golfing gods looked down kindly on the Perthshire resort and delivered a week of dry, bright conditions when most folk had worked themselves into a desperate fankle about the potential for disruptions from above. You knew there would be a price to pay. The rain that didn't fall on the Ryder Cup had obviously been stored in a locker room up yonder and was unleashed for the start of the Gleneagles Scottish PGA Championship yesterday. The unrelenting downpours caused the first round over a flooded King's course to be abandoned and the Tartan Tour's flagship event, featuring former Open champion Paul Lawrie, has now been reduced to 54-holes. It will be the first time in almost 50 years that the Scottish PGA will be decided by less than 72-holes. John Panton and Eric Brown shared the honours in the 1966 championship at Cruden Bay in an event contested over just two rounds. Indeed, the only other time Scotland's national event didn't go the full distance was also at Cruden Bay in 1913 when it was reduced to 54-holes. "Despite the marvellous efforts of the green keeping staff, there was no way we could get play underway," explained Brian Mair, the Scottish PGA secretary. "The decision was taken to cancel play for the day and resume on Monday with the original Monday round two tee-times. The plan is to complete 18 holes on Monday and then commence round two immediately, with the completion of the second round expected on Tuesday. At this point, we will make a cut to top 50 and ties and complete the championship on Wednesday over the remaining 18 holes."
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 hereComments are closed on this article