Time and right venue are key to troubled pro-am

Mike Aitken, The Scotsman, 22 October 2001

Given the huge amount of prize money on offer as well as the enormous effort put into making the championship work by a large number of dedicated people, it can give no one with the slightest interest in golf any satisfaction to conclude that the £3.6 million Alfred Dunhill Links is the wrong tournament at the wrong time of year.

Handicapped by appalling weather, constant interruptions and galleries so sparse the spectators in Fife and Angus were often outnumbered by the sea-gulls, this inaugural staging of a hugely ambitious concept turned into a very damp squib indeed.

Most of the professionals, who will be back to pursue the lucrative first prize of £551,000 when the delayed final round gets under way this morning, and their amateur partners, who relished an opportunity to play with the game’s elite and make "dreams come true", according to film star Michael Douglas, all spoke warmly yesterday about the event. But the Scottish golfing public’s enthusiasm was much less evident.

However you dress it up, the Dunhill Links is a made-for-TV event which carries more appeal for non-golfers interested in spotting celebrities than true golf fans. The Scottish galleries, who regularly turn out in such large numbers for the Open and the Scottish Open, have not been so keen to part with £15 each day to watch actors and sportsmen show why they don’t play golf for a living.

Lee Westwood made a fair point when he said the weather had been so awful that it was unreasonable to expect large numbers to support what is a new concept for a tournament in this part of the world. After finishing off with 72 for five over par and missing the cut, the young Englishman quipped he wouldn’t have wanted to pay to watch someone play the way he’d just done.

Stung by newspaper criticism which lambasted the tournament over the weekend, the organisers ushered a succession of players and celebrities into the media tent to praise the event rather than to bury it.

Colin Montgomerie talked of the tournament being a great showcase for Scotland and how keen people were to travel vast distances to compete on courses of the calibre of Kingsbarns and Carnoustie. "This tournament will become the best pro-am in the world," he forecast.

Douglas reckoned the championship would have been far better received if there had been more golf to write about. "It’s much easier in bad weather conditions to find bad things to say than good," he said. Darren Clarke was at a loss to explain why a tournament held on three of the best courses in the British Isles had come in for so much flak. "They’ve been very, very unlucky with the weather, but you can’t blame the organisers for that."

Everyone, of course, is entitled to their own opinion. But the problem with all this eulogising was it sounded awfully like beating the drum for a troubled tournament and didn’t address the key issue of how to make a TV event more appealing to the paying public.

Most followers of golf are already nostalgic for the return of the Dunhill Cup. The medal match play format for competing nations was a welcome antidote to the ferocity of the Ryder Cup and, compared to its successor, was reasonably easy to follow.

That said, with four more years of the Dunhill Links still to come, there’s no sign of anyone involved with the event promoting a change back to the international match play format.

One alteration which will take place in 2002 is that the championship will move forward a couple of weeks in the schedule. In fact, it will occupy the slot after the Ryder Cup match between Europe and the USA at the Belfry, thereby hoping to persuade players of the calibre of Tiger Woods, David Duval and Phil Mickelson to visit Scotland and play more links golf.

While it was wonderful to see Carnoustie presented in a much more playable fashion over the past few days than during the 1999 Open, my own feeling is the event would be easier to follow and less complicated to organise if it was held in St Andrews.

By all means retain Kingsbarns, which has drawn favourable comparisons with Pebble Beach over the past few days, but why not include the New Course as well as the Old and bill the championship as a celebration of the game in the home of golf?

There was also some merit in the plea from Ken Schofield, the executive director of the European Tour, when he asked for patience and support for the new format as it beds in. The Scot is keenly aware that sponsors willing to back £3.6 million tournaments are not exactly thick on the ground and he is anxious not to lose Dunhill’s involvement.