DEER PARK HOSTS SCOTLAND’S TOP PROS

NEWS RELEASE ISSUED BY THE SCOTTISH PGA
The race to be Scotland’s top professional golfer of the year continues Tuesday when the 36-hole Inbuild Deer Park Masters tees off in a shotgun start just before 9am.
Twenty-five pro-am teams will commandeer the Livingston course in the morning, and another 25 will do battle after lunch. And in the absence of holder Craig Lee, current Order of Merit leader after three events, former winner Greig Hutcheon (Banchory), currently second, gets the chance to put some distance between himself and Lee in the £17,000 two-day tournament.
But among the familiar names crowding the OM leaderboard is one less prominent, certainly in terms of his professional career – and he tees up at Deer Park only because Lee’s absence created a vacant berth.
Graeme Brown, a 30-year-old in the second year of his professional training at Montrose Links under head pro, Jason Boyd, has quietly moved his way into third place after finishing sixth in the SkyCaddie Challenge at Monifieth, a share of fourth in the Duke of Roxburghe Challenge, and, his best show of the season, a tie for second in the Scottish WaterAid 36 holes, worth almost £1,500.
And last Friday he tied sixth, with fellow Scot, David Patrick, in the Powerade PGA Assistants’ Championship at East Sussex (Graham Fox, another Deer Park starter, was third).
A Scottish amateur Internationalist in 2004 – Brown was undefeated against England, Ireland and Wales that year – he won a university scholarship to Alabama, where his record was impressive (10 collegiate victories).
Among others teeing up at Livingston with some hopes of success are Stephen Gray (Hayston), the two European Senior Tour players Andy Oldcorn and Fraser Mann, the former currently seventh on that tour with winnings of around 113,000 euros.