IRONMAN CRAIG LEE HEADS SCOTS CHALLENGE TOUR BID

By SCOTT CROCKETT

European Tour Chief Press Officer

Craig Lee, Scottish golf’s own ironman, will lead the Scottish charge this week for the ALLIANZ Golf Open Grand Toulouse on the European Challenge Tour.

The 34 year old from Stirling has, incredibly, competed in 19 of the 20 Challenge Tour events of the 2011 season, the only tournament he missed being the Karnten Golf Open in Austria at the beginning of June.

Such a show of stamina has helped Lee (pictured) to his current position of 13th place on the Rankings – the top ranked Scot on the list – and within sight of the top 20 at the end of the season who will win a card for The 2012 European Tour International Schedule.

Another good showing this week in the southwest of France will strengthen the former Scottish boys stroke-play champion’s claims, alongside the five other Scots in the field:  rookie James Byrne, Gavin Dear, Chris Doak, Jack Doherty and Jamie McLeary.

However they are up against a strong field, all vying for the lion’s share of the €160,000 prize fund in this, the fifth last counting event of the 2011 Challenge Tour season.

Included in that number is another stamina specialist, England’s Phil Archer, who despite being, at 39, one of the elder statesmen on the Challenge Tour, still retains a keen appetite for the game as he will prove in this, his seventh tournament outing on the spin in his attempt to return to The European Tour where he played from 2005 to 2010.

Archer’s best season on The European Tour was in 2007 where he finished second on three occasions and also helped Great Britain and Ireland retain The Seve Trophy. He admitted such success has given him added impetus to return to the big time.

“I think your expectations are higher because I know my abilities and I know what I can do,” he said. “I have age and experience on my side and hopefully that will help me in the run-in but I am still learning about the game and the mental side of the game too. You are never too old to stop learning.”

Should Archer triumph this week, it would complete an excellent September for English golfers on the European Challenge Tour with Tommy Fleetwood having won the Kazakhstan Open to move to the top of the Rankings, and Sam Little having triumphed last week in the M2M Russian Challenge Cup to move to sixth.

However, there is an impressive array of Continental European talent lined up all with their eye on the lion’s share of the €160,000 prize fund, including Frenchman Charles-Edouard Russo, who has finished in the top six in the tournament in the past two seasons, and Germany’s Nicolas Meitinger, who won the ALLIANZ Challenge de France in Paris in May.

Another Frenchman keen to make an impact is Michael Lorenzo-Vera, who topped the Challenge Tour Rankings in 2007 as the Number One graduate, and who heads to Toulouse in fine fettle on the back of a highly encouraging performance at last week’s M2M Russian Challenge Cup, where he finished in a tie for 11th place.