WHEN it comes to doing his bit for the development of Scottish golf, Paul Lawrie continues to provide more opportunities than Hughie Green.
The latest opportunity to come a-knocking for the country’s next wave of touring professionals is the European Challenge Tour’s Farmfoods Scottish Challenge, which is being revived next season by Lawrie’s own 5Star Sports agency.
The Scottish event used to be a treasured perennial of the second-tier circuit for 13 years until it dropped off the schedule in 2018. Thanks to the efforts and energy of Lawrie’s team and backers, as well as a helping hand from the R&A, the tournament will return to the scene in 2022 at Newmachar.
It’s another admirable endeavour from Lawrie who remains tireless in his support of the game in his homeland. His long-running Foundation continues to flourish, he brought a European Tour event to the cradle of the game for a couple of years, he still hosts a championship on the over-50s Legends Tour and his own Tartan Pro Tour, forged amid the uncertainty of Covid, goes from strength-to-strength. The value of this latest venture is not lost on Lawrie.
“It’s the most important event we’ve ever done,” declared the 52-year-old of a tournament which has helped a number of Scottish pros progress to the main European circuit while giving a few invited amateurs some much-needed experience of the general cut-and-thrust. “It’s important that we have it on the schedule again for the progression of players from mini- tours. We want more Scottish players playing at the top level, winning tournaments and showing us what they can produce. This just gives us another avenue to get the Scottish talent onto the main tour because that is what we all want. This event gives them the opportunity. Without that, it’s really, really tough.”
The professional scene has always been a ruthless old business but it has changed a bit since Lawrie was cutting his teeth. With the proliferation of mini-circuits and development tours nowadays, there are more pro avenues than ever before but with more players trying to clamber up the ladder, it can be as cut-throat as an appointment at Sweeney Todd’s barber shop.
“You look at the EuroPro Tour, for example, and there are only five guys who can progress to the Challenge Tour every year out of god knows how many guys,” said the 1999 Open champion of the highly-competitive third-tier tour. “I’ve been at those events because my son Craig plays in them and the standard is off the scale.
“It’s different to when I started. The players are better, stronger and fitter and there are so many mini-tours now. There were none in my time. You went to qualifying school, and if you had a bad week that was you done pretty much for a year. Now there are opportunities for these boys and it’s a little bit about speculating to accumulate. There’s no money on these mini-tours, there’s no big living to be made. You’re trying to get sponsorship to play and get the step up to the next level. Mini-tours are important. You’ve got to have somewhere to play. That’s why we started the Tartan Pro Tour. The EuroPro Tour was cancelled for the year in 2020 due to Covid and we put on some 36-hole events. We’re just trying to make it a little easier for the boys we feel have the ability to crack on and get themselves playing at a higher level.”
The European Challenge Tour, meanwhile, has always been a proven breeding ground. Brooks Koepka won the Scottish Challenge at Aviemore in 2013 and is now a four-time major champion. The likes of Grant Forrest, David Law, Calum Hill and Robert MacIntyre all played in it during their rise and are now tour champions. Lawrie is confident other Scots can follow.
“I mentioned it a few years ago that we had six or seven players who were capable of winning at a main tour level and they are all doing it,” Lawrie said.
“They are feeding off each other. They seem quite pally, but there’s a competitiveness and they all want to beat each other. That’s something you want and that’s something I always had.
“Stephen Gallacher, Marc Warren, Monty? All the boys were quite pally, but we wanted to win when in the tournaments.”
Lawrie will be hoping his latest enterprise can produce another wave of winners.
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