In praise of Alex Salmond’s golfing legacy

UNLESS he has something up his sleeve to announce in the next week, Alex Salmond is done and dusted with Scottish golf as he prepares to step down as First Minister.

Alex Salmond was heckled at the Ryder Cup despite helping to save the Scottish Open. Picture: Jane Barlow

His final contribution was delivering a deal that will see the Scottish Open played under the Aberdeen Asset Management banner through until 2020, by which time its prize pot will be in excess of £4 million.

I’ll be brutally honest here by admitting that listening to Salmond when he first started appearing at golf events made me cringe, especially the time he came out and said that Clubgolf, the national junior initiative, would effectively turn Scotland into the game’s dominant force. While a scheme that’s certainly not lacking when it comes to enthusiastic staff and volunteers, I still don’t see enough evidence to back up that belief.

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Since he got involved in saving the Scottish Open and now securing a strong future for it, however, Salmond has earned my respect and, certainly from a golfing point of view, is a hard act to follow for his successor, Nicola Sturgeon.

It was a disgrace, in fact, that he was heckled on the first tee during the last day of the Ryder Cup at Gleneagles then booed at the closing ceremony.

Without his efforts, combined with those of AAM chief executive Martin Gilbert and George O’Grady, the European Tour chief executive, the Scottish Open would have fallen off the schedule by now. The prized pre-Open Championship slot would have been lost forever.

When it comes to golf, Salmond is leaving a legacy that will provide Scottish golf fans some tasty treats over the next few years, starting at Gullane next July when it stages the national Open for the first time.

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