The Tartan Tour has been bolstered by the addition of the Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open Qualifier to its schedule this season.
The 36-hole strokeplay shoot-out will be held at North Berwick in the week building up to the domestic showpiece at Gullane in July. This event within an event - even though it is a stand alone event - will boast a prize fund of £50,000, a decent chunk of cash for a qualifying contest, while the opportunity to seize one of five places on offer for the European Tour's Scottish Open will be the considerable carrot being dangled on the stick. The fact the Scottish Open, staged the week before the Open Championship at St Andrews, has a purse of £3.25 million means that a raft of home-based PGA professionals will be licking their lips at the prospect of a potentially lucrative few days in their own backyard. And who knows? With the Scottish Open also offering three places into the Open itself, for the leading finishers who are not already exempt, there is the outside possibility of a real golfing fairytale being penned. From North Berwick to St Andrews via Gullane? We can but dream.
The qualifying event, which has been scheduled for July 4-5 and will feature a field of 144 players, will essentially be for Scottish PGA professionals and those who have a direct link to Scotland through work or birth. The Scottish Golf Union, meanwhile, will be invited to send six amateurs to the competition and a maximum of 12 places have been reserved for sponsor invitations. "We are thrilled to be giving promising Scottish golfers the opportunity to play in their own Scottish Open through this qualifier," said Martin Gilbert, the chief executive of the AAM group that ploughs sizeable sums into Scottish golf across the board. "What a story it would be if a Scottish player went onto to win the Open at St Andrews having qualified through North Berwick and then Gullane."
Mike Cantlay, the chairman of VisitScotland, added: "Golf in Scotland is known for being open and accessible and the Scottish Open qualifier is a fine example of opening up one of the world's leading golf tournaments to even more players."
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