Scotland make it back-to-back Euro titles

• Scotland successfully defend European Mens Team title
• Ian Rae’s men beat Sweden 5-2 in the final in France
• Aussie Am champ Connor Syme went unbeaten all week

Connor Syme and Craig Howie went unbeaten all week as Scotland successfully defended their European Mens Amateur Team Championship with a 5-2 final victory over Sweden.

Drumoig man Syme, who won the Australian Amateur Championship earlier this year, launched a superb comeback with Howie in the morning foursomes – coming from three down with six to play to win on the 21st – which proved to be the turning point after Robert MacIntyre and Sandy Scott had earlier went down 3&2 to their Swedish opponents.

With the scores locked at 1-1 heading into the singles matches, Grant Forrest raced out the traps to win 5&4, while Syme capped a brilliant week with a record of 5-0-1 to win 4&3. Add in MacIntyre’s win on the 18th and Scotland had an unassailable lead, which resulted in Howie and Sandy Scott’s singles matches being halved.

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“The team have been superb all week,” said jubilant national coach Ian Rae. “The spirit in the camp has been excellent and the players have gone out and performed so well in each of the three matches. To win back-to-back titles is a great achievement and the players should be really proud of the way they’ve prepared, performed and worked together.”

“We have strength in depth throughout this group of players and they are a great bunch of lads who won as a team. We have the World Amateur Team Championship coming later in the season, so it’ll be tough to pick our three-man team for that, which is a great problem to have.”

Scotland’s amateurs last won consecutive titles in 1975 and 1977 when the championship was played every two years, with Sweden also the beaten finalists in the latter.

Elsewhere, Scotland’s Ladies team made it three wins out of three in the matchplay stages to win the Flight B play-off final against Italy to finish ninth, while the Boys team ended their week on a high beating the Czech Republic 4 – 1 in Austria to secure seventh spot overall. In the European Amateur Girls Team Championship in Norway, Scotland were edged out 3-2 by Switzerland.

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