Sam Torrance: Sandy Jones was great and he's a big loss

Ryder Cup legend Sam Torrance paid a warm tribute to Sandy Jones as a who’s who of golfing administrators attended the Scot’s funeral.

PGA chief executive Sandy Jones, left, pictured with Ken Brown, PGA chairman Phil Weaver and Ryder Cup Director Richard Hills at the Ryder Cup Heritage Exhibition launch on 2012 at the Verulamiam Museum in St Albans. Picture: Jan Kruger/Getty Images.

Jones was the PGA in Scotland secretary before moving to The Belfry to become the PGA chief executive, serving in that post for 25 years.

“He was great,” said Torrance, speaking at the PGA in Scotland annual lunch in Glasgow of his compatriot. “We had some fantastic times.

“He gave me so much praise when I would come back from the European Tour and play in the Scottish PGA. But I would say ‘jeez Sandy, it’s nothing to come back, of course I would play in it’. We had a great bond through the Ryder Cups, too. He's a big loss.”

Jones’s funeral was held at Little Aston in the Midlands, where the service was attended by former PGA of America chief executive Joe Steranka.

The congregation also included former European Tour chief executives Ken Schofield and George O’Grady, Ryder Cup director Richard Hills and three-time Ryder Cup captain Bernard Gallacher.

Former Rangers manager Alex McLeish, a long-time friend of Jones, also attended the service while Sir Alex Ferguson wrote a letter of condolence to Jones’s wife, Christine.

Iain Burns, who worked under Jones at The PGA and is now the manager at Little Aston Golf Club, did a reading while Schofield delivered the eulogy.

In that, he concluded: “In thanking Sandy for all that he did, all of the achievements, all of his accomplishments, we again say, it was much more the way Sandy did things than all of the things he achieved and accomplished.”