Salmond foresees success for Scotland via clubgolf junior initiative

FIRST Minister Alex Salmond is confident the clubgolf junior initiative will produce home players who can challenge for the Scottish Open in years to come.

"It's great to see the leaderboard today peppered with great Scottish professionals but clubgolf is fundamentally important - it is the initiative that is going to propel Scotland into a dominating power of world golf," he said during a visit to Castle Stuart.

"The only way to do that is have the base of the pyramid as great as it can be and to coach people through, making sure not just this leaderboard but the Ryder Cups and great tournaments of the future will feature Scottish professionals."

In a boost for the programme, Salmond revealed that Martin Laird, Alastair Forsyth, Scott Jamieson, Peter Whiteford and Paul Lawrie had all volunteered their services to help with it.

As it was announced that VisitScotland's 'Drive it Home' campaign could bring 30,000 visitors - a rise of 63 per cent from last year - to the home of golf Salmond dismissed fears that the weather-hit event near Inverness would affect golf tourism in Scotland.

"Folk around the world know that everywhere is subject to freakish weather and there are many places where the weather is freakish and worse than what happens here," he said.

Talking specifically about Castle Stuart, Salmond added: "I bumped into Phil Mickelson five minutes ago and he described this as one of the best courses he had ever seen.

"Castle Stuart will be vindcated in years to come as one of the outstanding venues of golf, not just in Scotland but the world, and you have Phil Mickelson's word for it."