New Tartan Tour supremo gets £1million

challenge from Sandy Jones

FROM THE PGA E-BULLETIN
The new head of Scottish PGA golf has been set a million pound target to hit in the next five years.
Michael MacDougall, pictured, has been tasked with nearly doubling the Tartan Tour’s £575,000 prize fund which includes the flagship Gleneagles Scottish PGA Championship.
PGA chief executive Sandy Jones, a former Scottish Regional secretary himself, has laid down the challenge and it’s one 28-year-old MacDougall is eager to embrace.
“Sandy likes setting challenges and I’d be ecstatic if I could achieve that, but I’m being realistic at the moment, hardly having my feet under the desk, (he officially took over
from Gordon Dewar on January 1),” said MacDougall who hails from Rothesay and picked up a degree in history and politics at Glasgow University five years ago.
MacDougall, a qualified PGA referee, who had a two-handicap as a teenager, has already been in action in the US PGA Championship and last year’s Open Championship at Turnberry.
But his new job, based at the Scottish Region’s headquarters at Gleneagles Hotel, brings
substantial challenges.
“Over the last 20 years or so, competitive
golf has mushroomed in every area –
amateur male and female, pro male and
female, and seniors,” he added.
“You’ve now got levels of competition like the
Challenge Tour, the Europro Tour, the EDP Tour,
the Alps Tour, and they’re all battling for
sponsorship – and for space in newspapers
and magazines, who’ve expanded their football
coverage enormously in the last few years.
“Nor is the current financial state of the
country doing us any favours. Potential
sponsors are surely out there; it’s just that
bit tougher to identify them.”