Martin Dempster: Sadly, Scots didn’t match Dutch courage in Girona

It’s the number of players that were successful from the two countries in last week’s European Tour Qualifying School in Girona, the end-of-year six-round examination that sorts the out men from the boys.

Scotland’s graduates on this occasion were Steven O’Hara and Gary Orr, both of whom are time-served campaigners yet still deserve credit for the way they performed from start to finish at PGA Catalunya.

It was, however, a poor return for the country that is the home of the game and even more so when you compare it alongside the Dutch enjoying a clean sweep as all five of their players secured coveted cards.

For the record, Wil Besseling, Maarten Lafeber, Taco Remkes, Reinier Saxton and Tim Sluiter will be joining Joost Luiten and Robert Jan-Derksen at the top table next year.

Besseling, Luiten and Sluiter all had impressive amateur records, notably as members of the winning Eisenhower Trophy team in 2006, two years before Scotland were sitting on top of the world after claiming that prize.

So, too, did Saxton, who won the Amateur Championship at Turnberry in 2008, the year Remkes made it a Dutch double on our soil as he claimed the Scottish Challenge at Macdonald Cardrona outside Peebles.

That was one of three triumphs Remkes recorded on the second-tier circuit that season and, though he finished 195th on the European Tour money list after making just eight cuts in 31 events the following year, he has now earned a second bite at the cherry.

The same applies to Besseling, another player who won on the Challenge Tour on his way to earning a step up in 2009, when he also failed to hang on to his card.

Sluiter found himself back at the Qualifying School, too, after finishing below both O’Hara and Orr on this year’s money list but once again showed he had the mettle for such a test, with Saxton securing his card at the second time of asking.

Add in Lafeber, who won the Dutch Open in 2003 and finished joint-second behind Tim Clark in the 2005 Scottish Open at Loch Lomond, and it’s a talented bunch of individuals.

What’s even more exciting, certainly from the Dutch perspective, is that only Lafeber has blown out the candles on his 30th birthday cake. Sluiter (22), Saxton (23), Besseling (26) and Remkes (27) are all still learning the ropes at the top level and look as though their best years lie ahead.

Let’s hope the same applies to O’Hara, who has been chiselling away at the coalface for a decade now but, at 31, still has time on his side to make that breakthrough on the European Tour and then kick on from that. At 44, it would be easy to suggest Orr’s targets are perhaps somewhat different these days, but he’ll be playing on the Tour for the 20th consecutive season next year and no-one should begrudge him that opportunity.

What is disappointing, however, is that Scotland didn’t have any young guns in there battling with the five Dutchman and a posse of Englishman when it came down to the nitty-gritty at the Qualifying School.

James Byrne, David Law and Michael Stewart, our equivalent of Sluiter and Saxton, had all fallen at the first hurdle, while Callum Macaulay and Lloyd Saltman, who are similar ages to Besseling and Remkes, both failed to qualify for the last two rounds.

Chris Doak, in fact, was the only other Scot to survive the four-round cut and to be left with just three players in the final 70 and ties scrambling for cards is not exactly much to shout home about, is it?

It’s nothing new to see English players making that transition from amateur to professional more smoothly than their Scottish counterparts, Tommy Fleetwood’s success in topping the Challenge Tour rankings this season having been followed by a 1-2-3 from David Dixon, Sam Hutsby and Andy Sullivan at the Qualifying School.

However, with all due respect, when we start trailing countries like the Netherlands when it comes to producing European Tour players, then the alarm bells should be ringing loud and clear.