McKay aims for home rule

SIXTEEN years after she helped out behind the scenes at the Open won by Greg Norman at Turnberry, Mhairi McKay will return to Ayrshire this summer hoping to turn a childhood dream of major success into reality.

The young Scot, who went to college in California with Tiger Woods, was brought up on the Ailsa course and to this day rates the links as one of the most challenging and beautiful anywhere in the world.

With the 1million Weetabix Women’s British Open - the first women’s major ever to be held in Scotland - due to be hosted by Turnberry from 8-11 August, McKay can’t wait to return home and test her skills over the layout she knows best against the finest female golfers on the planet.

"When I was ten years old I was a ball-spotter during the Open which Greg Norman won," recalled the former British Girls champion. "Obviously then I was dreaming of playing under the same circumstances, and it’s a thrill to think I’ll get to play the British Open in front of home support."

A graduate of Stanford University (she took a Portuguese literature class with Tiger), the American-based Scot enjoyed the best season of her professional career in America last year, when she earned over $439,000 on the LPGA Tour and clinched eight top-ten finishes.

A fine links golfer as an amateur - she held the ladies’ record of 67 at the Old Course - McKay says she can’t think of a more fitting place to register her first LPGA win than at Turnberry.

"I think it’s only fitting to have the Weetabix in Scotland, the home of golf, and I’m particularly enthusiastic to have this major at my home course during its centenary celebrations," she said. "The Ailsa is one of my all-time favourite tracks, 18 very different and challenging but fair holes that change daily depending on the weather - holes you can never grow tired of playing."

McKay’s fellow Scots on the LPGA Tour - Janice Moodie, Catriona Matthew and Kathryn Marshall - will be among the other home hopes aiming to triumph at the 1million event. Matthew and Moodie, who both finished joint third behind Se Ri Pak at Sunningdale last year, are particularly ambitious to become the first golfer from north of the Border to win a women’s major.

With players of the calibre of Se Ri Pak and Australia’s Karrie Webb competing in Scotland for the first time, the Weetabix promises to be one of the events of the season.

STILL on the subject of Turnberry, Brad Faxon, arguably the game’s best putter, tells the story of how he made a bet in 1994 during a practice round for the Open with Ben Crenshaw, Davis Love III and Corey Pavin. The wager was that if any of the four could complete all 18 holes at the Ailsa course without a bogey, then the others would pay him $1,000 each.

"Ben bogeyed the second, Davis the 12th and Corey the 14th," Faxon recalled. "That left me. It was the most fun I remember having, those last four holes, the three of them rooting against me out loud right to the point of contact. As soon as I hit my tee-shot on the 18th, I offered them a buy-out for $975. Nobody took it. I made my par and they all paid me $1,000."

In an interview with the May issue of the American magazine Golf Digest, Faxon also talks about one of the most controversial moments in recent Ryder Cup matches, when Colin Montgomerie said he didn’t think the American would be mentally with it at Valderrama because he was going through a divorce.

Asked about his response to those remarks, Faxon revealed: "I wasn’t offended at all. And people are like, ‘How can you not be?’ Because I know Monty, I really like him, and I love his wife - she’s a doll. He’s being asked this stuff, but I don’t know what the circumstances are. He was probably caught off guard.

"He says - ‘Faxon can’t hit a fairway’. Well, I don’t hit it as well as he does and I’d been going through a divorce. Then he said something about Maggert and it was clear he was just attacking the US team. I don’t know why, but I really don’t think he was trying to say bad things about us as much as he was just trying to state the truth."

THE Scottish Golf Union, the body responsible for running the amateur game in Scotland, yesterday named the men who will steer the organisation’s future as directors of Scottish Golf Ltd and the Scottish National Golf Centre Ltd.

After a lengthy consultation process, it was decided the SGU’s executive would continue in its role as the governing body, though it will fall to SGL to implement a five-year business plan while SNGCL is responsible for Drumoig.

The seven non-executive directors of SGL were all allocated specific tasks. The chairman, Alistair Low, is an actuary and represented Scotland in the Sixties. He’s a former chairman of the Royal and Ancient’s championship committee.

Douglas Corner, former deputy chief executive of the Clydesdale, takes on marketing and business; Mike Dickson, formerly with Coopers and Lybrand, will handle finance; Bill Mitchell, of Cochrane Castle, is golf director; Fife farmer Robert Burns, who has long been involved with the St Andrews Links Trophy, will deal with championships; Willie Young, the principal leisure officer for Argyll and Bute council, leads the development team; and Brian Ewing, director of the Institute of Sport at Dundee University, is in charge of performance.

James McArthur, the managing partner of Hardies Property, chairs the SNGCL with assistance from Bill Soutar (marketing), James Gray (facilities) and Mike Dickson (finance).

ROCCO Mediate repeated his success of 1993 when he won his fifth PGA Tour title, the Greater Greensboro Classic, on Sunday. Mediate’s closing 71 left him at 16-under 272, three strokes clear of the 1989 Open champion Mark Calcavecchia.

Victory lifted the 39-year-old from Pennsylvania to a career-high 12th in the world and to sixth in the US Tour money-list. It was Mediate’s first win in 18 months.