Scottish Golf squads face busy schedules

• Scots golfers face busy winter schedules in sunnier climes
• Ferguson, McDonald and Forrest head Down Under after New Year
• Host of players then heading to South Africa for training camp

Scotland’s leading male and female amateur golfers will gain valuable experience and competitive opportunities at various worldwide events over the winter months.

Having benefited from an intensive performance training camp in the UAE, Scottish national squad players will hone their games and chase silverware at prestigious events in the coming weeks, with Walker Cup-winning players Ewen Ferguson, Jack McDonald and Grant Forrest having particularly hectic schedules.

The trio will head Down Under early in the New Year along with Drumoig’s Connor Syme to contest the Australian Master of the Amateurs at Royal Melbourne from January 6-9, before going on to compete in the Australian Men’s Amateur at Metropolitan and Peninsula-Kingswood from January 12-17.

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From there, South Africa is the next stop off for the four players, where they will be joined by Scottish Amateur champion Robert MacIntyre, Calum Fyfe, Jamie Savage, Scott Gibson, Craig Ross, Sandy Scott (above) and Rory Franssen for a training camp and programme that involves competing in four major events on the South African circuit and a triangular match against the South African Golf Development Board and the South African Golf Association.

Ferguson, McDonald and Forrest are expected to compete in the first three events – the Gauteng North Open (January 28-30), the South African Stroke Play Championship (February 2-5) and the African Amateur Stroke Play Championship (February 10-13) – before heading off to Spain with MacIntyre (below) as they seek to emulate the country’s 2014 Nations Cup success. Syme will then join the quartet for the Spanish Amateur.

The winter training programme in South Africa follows the great success of past trips, with Craigie Hill’s Daniel Young returning with silverware in 2015 after becoming the third Scot in the last five years to win the South African Amateur, while the squad also works with the South African Golf Development Board to help children from underprivileged areas into golf.

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Steve Paulding, Scottish Golf performance director, said: “I’m looking forward to seeing how players perform in these early competitions, but we know it’s a long season with the men’s and women’s European Team championships in France and Iceland and the World Championships in September in Mexico being the focus.”

Meanwhile, from today until Saturday, Grantown-on-Spey’s Hannah McCook is competing in the Argentine Women’s Open after receiving an invitation from the R&A. Having secured the R&A Foundation Scholars Tournament in St Andrews this year, McCook is now teeing up at The Hurlingham Club in Buenos Aires.

And she will be joined by Chloe Goadby, the 2015 Girls Order of Merit winner, and men’s duo Barry Hume and Ryan Campbell for the South American Amateur in Peru at the end of January, before McCook, Goadby and Gabrielle Macdonald contest the Portuguese Ladies Amateur in Palmela from January 27.