World champion Gavin Dear and Wallace Booth

are favourites for Scottish amateur championship

NEWS RELEASE ISSUED BY THE SCOTTISH GOLF UNION
Royal Troon will be the testing ground this week as the country’s leading male amateurs battle for the right to call themselves the national champion at the SGU’s flagship event the Allied Surveyors Scottish Amateur Championship.
The world champion status of Gavin Dear and Wallace Booth, who were also members of the six-man team that won the European team championship this season, is reflected as the Perthshire pair go into the event as favourites.
With reigning champion Callum Macaulay, the third member of that team which brought the world title to Scotland when they won the Eisenhower Trophy last year, having now turned pro, they are entitled to be considered two of the key players on the names to watch list.
Dear has shown excellent form following that Eisenhower Trophy win. He became the first Scot to win the prestigious Dixie men’s amateur championship in Florida at the end of last year. Since then he has won the Irish amateur open championship as well as the Craigmillar Park Open and he was runner-up at the Bidwells Scottish open amateur stroke-play championship.
He meets Tantallon’s Joe Lockie on the opening morning, while Booth has a long wait before getting his campaign underway on the second afternoon of the championship, when he faces 2004 British Boys champion Jordan Findlay.
If Dear survives to the quarter-finals he will meet best friend Keir McNicoll, another of the seven Scots who are in the Walker Cup training squad, while Booth would be up against Ayrshire man Steven McEwan, last season’s SGU Order of Merit winner and beaten finalist in this event at Carnoustie 12 months ago.
Another member of Scotland’s European championship-winning team who must be seen as a serious challenger is Michael Stewart, the former Scottish boys champion, not least because the Troon Welbeck golfer is playing in his home town.
Local knowledge at a venue that has hosted this event on five previous occasions could prove a massive advantage at what is one of the finest championship courses in the world, boasting a famously formidable inward nine.
However the teenager has been handed the most fearsome of draws since he opens against Paul McKellar whose career highlights were at this venue. The 53-year-old was runner-up at the Scottish amateur championship at Royal Troon in 1977, earning himself a place in that year’s Walker Cup team and again reached the final when the British Amateur was held over the same links the following year.
The omens are in McKellar’s favour, too, in a year that has already brought extraordinary echoes of 1977’s glorious golfing summer on the Ayrshire coast with Tom Watson, winner of the “Duel in the Sun” that year, once again starring in the Open Championship when it returned to Turnberry earlier this month.
Even if Stewart survives that battle, he is in the same section of the draw as another wily veteran who knows the terrain intimately. Former Scottish champion Allan Thomson proved he remains a competitive force when he reached the semi-final of this event when it was held at neighbouring Prestwick two years ago.
If all goes according to the plan, Stewart is due for a quarter-final meeting with Ross Kellett who has proved his mettle in match play already this year by reaching the final of the New South Wales Amateur Championship.
That looks a particularly tough quarter of the draw since it also contains Gordon Yates who is another of those Scots in the Walker Cup training squad.
Paul O’Hara, who has won the Edward Trophy and the Sutherland Chalice in establishing a lead in this season’s SGU Order of Merit is yet another who needs a good performance in this event to boost his Walker Cup aspirations. He finds himself in the same quarter as James Byrne, the former Scottish boys stroke-play champion who has also been in excellent form this season, winning both the East of Scotland Open and the Tennant Cup.
Allied Surveyors have been headline sponsors of the championship over the last five years with Glenn Campbell, Kevin McAlpine, John Gallagher and Callum Macaulay emerging as champions at Southerness, Nairn, Prestwick and Carnoustie. With Troon this year attracting such a high calibre field with the handicap ballot set at 0.9, this year’s title will be claimed by yet another worthy winner.
The match-play championship starts on tomorrow, with the quarter and semi finals on Friday and the 36 hole final concluding the event on Saturday 1 August.
Spectators are encouraged to come along and support the future stars of Scottish golf, who hope to join the illustrious list of former winners which includes Colin Montgomerie, Stephen Gallagher, Dean Robertson and Steven O'Hara.
For a regular news service and live scoring available throughout the event, visit the SGU website at http://www.scottishgolf.org/