Setting the ball rolling on the topic:

Whatever happened to the pros and assistants

who used to play in N E Alliance competitions?

By COLIN FARQUHARSON
It's been a busy day for a "retired" freelance golf writer/photographer ... four tournaments to report on without leaving my study and elder grandson Nicholas, who had the afternoon off school because of Founder's Day, to be taken down to the Deeside nine-hole course where he is a junior member.
He's 10 years old and probably will never reach the heights his mother did as a golfer ... but he has broken 100 already for 18 holes, and one never knows. He will almost certainly be a better golfer some day than his grandfather who did not take up the game until he had done his National Service in the Royal Army Pay Corps.
To cut the cackle and get to the point, I had intended to set the ball rolling much earlier than this late hour on the "Great Debate" about why professionals and assistant professionals are so thin on the ground these days at weekly North-east Alliance competitions.
I played in the Alliance in the 1960s when an amateur had to be very good to figure on the scratch prize list which was dominated by pros like Harry Bannerman & Co. Perhaps we don't want to return to that monopoly but I can remember the days when every club pro and quite a few assistants up the Dee Valley courses (before Peterculter and Inchmarlo were opened) from Deeside through Banchory (that's how Paul Lawrie started playing competitively as an assistant) to Aboyne and Ballater would play in every competition.
Now I agree that there was only one Alliance meeting per month, maybe two (my memory fails me on that one) in the 1960s.
It took the arrival of Major Bill Graham as Alliance secretary to make it a weekly organisation. Which reminds me of the true story of when Major Graham came to the North-east and joined the Alliance at the time when Chapper Thomson was secretary.
"Graham ... Major," said Bill when asked his name by Chapper at the Alliance registration desk.
"Major? Are ye here to play gowf or play sojers (soldiers)?" asked Chapper with not the trace of a smile on his face.
To set the ball rolling, here's an E-mail on the subject from Steve Kennedy (Craibstone), a regular Alliance competitor.

Steve Kennedy writes:
I, like many club golfers, feel privileged to be a part of the Alliance and thoroughly enjoy the experience. However, I was thinking about the question raised last week of how to encourage more pros to play.
I started thinking about the original concept of the Alliance:

1 To provide competitive golf for pros, assistants and elite amateurs over the winter months.
2 To create opportunity for pros and assistants to generate some income.
3 To allow club golfers the opportunity to play with better golfers and thus improve their game.

We do not seem to be achieving this ideal. Insufficient pros are playing. Many club golfers are not getting an opportunity to play with the elite players.
Here are some of my ideas to attract more pros and elite players to play:

1 Scrap the annual subscription fee for professional players. If they only get a chance to play one week here and there they will be more likely to do so (when they can staff their shop etc).
2 Have two sets of prizes. A prize for first, second and third best best PROFESSIONAL scratch scores on the day, with a separate prize for 1st, 2nd and 3rd best AMATEUR scratch.
3 The top five pros and the top five amateurs during the season to be given an exemption from green fees for the following season, i.e. an incentive to do well.

Since the club golfers will thus be subsidising the pros and elite amateurs to some extent, all of the above would be on the condition that the pros and elite amateurs mix in with the club golfers instead of playing at the same time and with invariably the same partners.
The groups may need to be formatted by the secretary to achieve this.
The Alliance will thus have the feel of a pro-am type event.

Impossible? Not at all, players could simply write their names under a preferred time period (limited slots available under each period).
Early (8am - 9:20am),
Mid-morning (9:20am - 10:40am).
Late (10:40am - Noon).

The match secretary would then be able to mix better players with club golfers of differing abilities within those tee times.
A little more work for the Secretary, and sometimes pals may not have the opportunity to play together every week but maybe that's way to achieve the original aims of the Alliance.

Steve Kennedy
PS Another topic is how to stop slow play, but I will reserve that for another time!

If you have any views about how a greater number of North-east professionals and their assistants can be attracted to play in the Wednesday Alliances - or even if you think that they do not deserve any better treatment than is accorded to your handicap amateur, send an E-mail to Colin@scottishgolfview.com

E-mails which contain insulting or derogatory remarks about named individuals will not be published. Neither will "anonymous" E-mails.