SGU to revamp and raise the profile

of Scottish area team championship

By COLIN FARQUHARSON
The Scottish Golf Union is going to repackage one of its less popular events, the season-long Scottish area team championship, and transform it into a high profile short, sharp event over the third weekend in May next year.
World amateur ranking points are becoming more and more important and the format for the 2010 new-look area team championship will take notice of that.
In match-play events, R&A WAGR points are awarded only from the quarter-finals onwards – which is the main reason why England, Ireland and Wales have converted what use to be their annual national match-play championships into two rounds of stroke-play followed by match-play for the leading 64.
That could be the next tournament to be overhauled but let’s get back to the definite changes to the area team championship.
It will be played on a Saturday and Sunday at a Central venue – to keep the costs down to the participating areas - in the third weekend of May, taking over the slot to be vacated by the English amateur championship for the Brabazon Trophy.
Each of the 16 area teams will still be represented by teams of six but on the Saturday they will play a two-round stroke-play tournaments with each team’s best five scores in the morning and again in the afternoon to count for the day’s total.
The four teams with the best 36-hole aggregates will advance to the semi-finals at the same venue on the Sunday morning … but now they revert to match-play but not quite the match-play format which prevails at the moment.
To get two semi-finals played on the Sunday morning and the final in the afternoon, there will be one foursome followed off the tee in quick succession by four singles ties.
“It will be a celebration of Scottish amateur golf,” said SGU supreme Hamish Grey enthusiastically.
“Whereas under the present drawn-out format, area teams are not always able to call on their best players for every tie. But with the focus in 2010 switching to one weekend, there is every chance that all the top amateurs in Scotland will be in action at one venue, which should draw golf writers to the event and that would produce more publicity that the tournament has had in the past.”