Scottish Senior Open champion Lane turned down big money draw in America to defend title at St Andrews

Lane, it transpires, received a late invitation to play in the Champions Tour event at New York’s Westchester Country Club, where the prize fund is worth more than six times the £250,000 on offer to those competing at the Fairmont, St Andrews.

But the 51-year-old Englishman from Hayes could not be tempted by a top prize of £245,000 compared to the £37,500 sum the winner at the Home of Golf will collect for his three days’ work.

He explained: “I turned down the invitation to stay loyal to the European Senior Tour and the sponsors. If I was sponsoring the event I would not be happy if the defending champion withdrew at just two days notice.

“You have to support the people who put the money into golf because it is a great tour and we need sponsors. That is the main reason I am defending, although I am still desperate to go and play in the States and it is my intention to give it a go next year.”

Lane, who plans to attend Champions Tour qualifying school at the end of the year, sits alongside American veteran Jerry Bruner, two shots off the pace set by Australian Peter Fowler.

He is currently the only player to divide his time between the European Senior Tour and the main tour, where he continues to belie his age by dint of making eight out of ten cuts this year.

Bruner, 64, claimed that he is just going through the motions in his final season on the senior circuit, but his effort yesterday suggested that there is still life in the old dog. “I have had enough,” he said. “I am based in Los Angeles and all the travelling at my age has become too much. I have also been going through the motions and playing lousy and that may have something to do with the fact that this is my final year.

“But a friend of mine said to me recently that the race is not yet run and I am clearly still in this tournament.”

St Andrews-born Gordon Manson, who has Austrian citizenship after spending 27 years in that country as a teaching professional, enjoyed his return to the Home of Golf when he posted a 69 to share fourth.

Manson is combining his attempt to secure his maiden Senior Tour victory with a visit to relations who reside in the Anstruther and Arbroath areas, including a 93-year-old aunt.

Highest placed Scot Bill Longmuir put his 70 down to a brand new set of woods after missing just one fairway. “Maybe they are what I have been looking for the past 18 months and they may help turn my season around,” he said.

Former Ryder Cup captain Sam Torrance, champion in 2006, is seven shots off the lead following a 72, courtesy of a birdie at the last after he had shed three shots over the first three holes. The 57-year-old Ayrshireman, designer of the course that is celebrating its tenth anniversary, confessed: “This game just does my head in as I prepared perfectly for the event. All I wanted to do was to get off to a good start so I knocked it on the first but then three-putted.

“I then drove it in the water at the third for a double. It’s the national Senior Open in Scotland, and it’s also on my course, so I wasn’t pleased. But then it’s always nice to birdie the last, and after the start I’m pleased to get it back to level par.”

Edinburgh’s Andrew Oldcorn matched Longmuir’s effort while Kirkcaldy-born Gordon Brand Junior settled for 71, the same as countrymen John Chillas and Peter Smith.

Two-time major champion Sandy Lyle was left bitterly disappointed on the back of a round of 74 that highlighted the former Open and Masters champion’s continuing problems of inconsistency and frustration.

Lyle has had issues with the state of his game since he ended a 19-year drought when he captured the ISPS Handa Senior World Championship five months ago.