with Bryan Angus

Thanks for joining me today. I look forward to your comments . They are always welcome here on FairwaysPlus. Bryan Angus bryanangus4@gmail.com



Thursday, October 1, 2015

A wonderful week of golf at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship

European Tour Alfred Dunhill Links Championship leaderboard http://www.europeantour.com/europeantour/season=2015/tournamentid=2015076/leaderboard/index.html#8YmEk1QzIfU20TbE.97

For those of you who have never travelled over to Scotland to visit and in particular play golf it is hard for me to put into words exactly how wonderful an experience it is. In fact as a golfer your journey is not complete until you do. The links courses, the people, the history, the food and drink, the smell of the salt sea air and the camaraderie are unsurpassed.

This week is a marvellous event, now called the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship where most of the top European Tour stars are paired with a combination of celebrities, family members or, and I could do without this, giants of industry, and they all play St. Andrews, Carnoustie and the relatively new Kingsbarns over 4 days, with a format similar to the annual AT&T pro-am at Pebble Beach,

The weather as always is embraced, or endured depending on your point of view, but it is usually a factor on the famous links courses on Scotland's south east coast. Today the sun is shining, it's calm, so the lads and a few lasses are in short sleeves and the scoring will be low.

I was asked earlier this week why this prestigious event was sponsored by a company that makes it's billions making cigarettes, considering that line of sponsorship is banned in Canada and all I can say is that I never thought for a minute when Peter Jackson or du Maurier were sponsoring the Canadian Open that it made one child or adult anywhere run out and start smoking. Many other factors are responsible for that, peer pressure for kids, or mom's and dad's who smoke are much more responsible than Alfred Dunhill spending millions to sponsor a golf tournament.

A Swede called Kristoffer Broberg is taking advantage of the benign weather on the Old Course and is at -8 through 15 having started on #10 and played the back nine  in 32 strokes. The course record is -10 62 held by 5 players and considering the sport was first played on the Links at St Andrews in the early 1400s it's a tribute to this venerable layout that only 5 guys have shot that score.

FYI, Scotland's Tom Kidd won the first Open Championship in 1873 with a score of 91,88 179 !

Bryan Angus

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