It's too easy to criticise Scott Jamieson over sore Sunday

Scott Jamieson couldn't recover from a poor start as he shot a closing 78 at the Tshwane Open in Pretoria. Picture: Warren Little/Getty Images

It was inevitable that Scott Jamieson's last-round collapse in the Tshwane Open on Sunday led to questions being asked about the mental strength of Scotland's current crop of European Tour players.

“They are in bad need of psychological assistance,” wrote one observer on scotsman.com after seeing Jamieson head into the last round sharing the lead only to end up outside the top 20 after a closing 78 in Pretoria. “There is not one of them who can hook four decent rounds together. None of them can handle pressure.”

It’s getting close to 24 months since a Scot last won a regular European Tour event – Richie Ramsay’s success in the Hassan Trophy in Morocco – and so it is easy to see why frustration is building. At the same time, though, it is way too easy to criticise, especially when Jamieson, in fairness, simply had one of those days when he got off to a poor start and never recovered, the exact opposite having been the case for winner Dean Burmester.

Unlike Paul Lawrie, for example, finding himself in with a chance of winning a golf tournament is something that Jamieson is still trying to get used to and it’s way harder than some people think to get that job done. Yes, of course, Sunday was a sore one for him, but it can also be the making of him over the next few years as he’s definitely got the game.