What is with Scottish professional golfers and putting?

To mere mortals at club level they do the difficult bit, namely the driving and long irons, like gods and the easy part, the putting, apparently not much better than us.

As Long John Daly, the original grip-it-and-rip-it youdaman, once said: “I enjoy the ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ from the gallery when I hit my drives, but I’m getting tired of the ‘aaws’ and ‘uhhs’ when I miss the putts.”

This is not pointing out anything new to our intrepid countrymen on the European Tour for whom it is a standard lament when they come off the course. You could attribute the
quote: “I’m hitting the ball better than ever, if only I could hole a few more putts,” to just about any one of them.

Now and again Paul Lawrie prefaces that remark with: “You must be fed up hearing this, but . . .” and you certainly can’t accuse the former Open champion of not trying to do something about it. He has had a special putting green installed at his Aberdeen home so that he can practise in winter and does so regularly for hours at a time until his back aches.

Yet check his European Tour performance statistics for this season and you will find he is a respectable No.42 in greens in regulation (GIRs), the best indicator of long game consistency, but down among the dead men at No.144 in putts per GIR, which, incidentally, is a more accurate reflection of putting form than the total putts category.

Steven O’Hara, the former Scottish amateur champion, is an even more extreme case. He is No.4 in GIRS and right up there alongside Camilo Villegas, winner of the Honda Classic on Sunday, and Accenture matchplay champion Ian Poulter. But in putts per GIR, he is frustratingly down at No.137 and rubbing shoulders there with Lawrie.

Last year he finished the entire season fourth in GIRs but was second last in putting at No.188 so perhaps there is a positive note there with a rise of 51 places in his first few tournaments this year. If you are looking for a world beater among the Scottish ranks, then O’Hara is your man, if only he could be No.4 in putting as well.

Stephen Gallacher (Nos 158 and 34 respectively) fits the same excruciating pattern. He and O’Hara, the top two Scots in the Malaysian Open at the weekend, followed the same pattern. O’Hara finished 34th and was 61st in putting but 22nd in GIRs while Gallacher, who placed 49th was up at 13th in GIRs but a lowly 66th in putting.

Undoubtedly one explanation is the absence of any off-season opportunity for the stay-at-home brigade to practise their short games in the firm and fast conditions that you find in the early season venues like Asia and the Middle-East. That doesn’t account for it all, however.

Try Richie Ramsay, winner of the South African Open at the tail end of last year. He is No.9 in GIRs and No.103 in the respective putting category, and he makes more effort than most to keep his short game in order by travelling regularly in winter to use the highly rated facilities at the Golf Club of Georgia. Marc Warren has a second home in Florida for that very same reason and yet you find him in the putting rankings at No.150.

Even Martin Laird, Scotland’s only top-100 world-ranked player, who is based at Scottsdale, Arizona, has the same trouble. Thinking he might buck the trend, I checked out his stats on the PGA Tour. Lo and behold, there he is at No.8 in GIRs and No.162 in putts per GIR.

Scotland’s highest-ranked putter is the cosmopolitan Alan McLean who has his main home in Canada but spends a lot of his time in South Africa where he grew up. You find him at No.71 and make of that what you will.

It is almost as if there is an evolutionary flaw, a malfunctioning putting gene that is peculiar to Scots.

You can say proudly “Wha’s like us,” in the ball-striking stakes, but when it comes to holing out in what is known indelicately as “the throw-up zone” then it might be best to look the other way.

And another thing

It is yet another measure of how quickly players are reaching the top of the tree that Japan’s rising star, Ryo Ishikawa, the world No.37, will be missing this week’s WGC-CA Championship at Doral, Florida, for the very good reason that he is attending his high school graduation.

The 18-year-old, who played alongside Tiger Woods in the Open at Turnberry last year, attracting far more media than the world No.1, was at Tokyo yesterday for the ceremony and could still have made the journey halfway round the globe in time to play, but did not feel that would allow him sufficient preparation.

Meanwhile, for 18-year-old Korean Seung-Yul Noh, the world was his oyster yesterday as he looked to his future following his victory in the Malaysian Open that means he now has options to play the European, Asian and Japan tours.

First up, however, is the Open Championship international qualifier at Kuala Lumpur starting on Wednesday that could provide him with a passport to St Andrews in July when he would be much older than Italian Matteo Manassero, who was joint 13th at Turnberry last year at the age of 16.