The Alfred Dunhill Links Championship hasn’t made it to the end twice in the last three seasons.
Bob MacIntyre won the shortened 54-hole Pro-Am last year after battling the same attritional weather that Matt Fitzpatrick faced when lifting the trophy in Scotland two years before.
The second round was squeezed onto the last page on Saturday morning, and the third round lasted 20 minutes when the wind put a stop to that idea.
In 2023, the Old Course at St Andrews was virtually underwater, and Storm Amy chopped a quarter of the popular links championship 12 months ago. Surely there’s an issue here.
If we are going to hold it at the home of golf, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns, maybe we shouldn’t play it when bad weather is likely.
Although we never see the world’s best play in adverse conditions and always see them sauntering around areas of perfection, the Dunhill can quite easily fall victim to extreme weather.
Reschedule it, please. Why not showcase these links beauties in their best light in the summer, allowing the players to prepare for The Open? A links swing. Why not run it consecutively with the Irish Open and the Scottish?
Golf course-wise, when they’re in a soft state of defencelessness, whereby shooting 7-under through three rounds is good enough to tie for 40th, and 18-under is the winning score after three rounds, they aren’t themselves.
We have the Sanderson Farms Championship for our fix of pitch-and-putt in the pro game at this time of year.
The Old Course, in particular, is at the centre of the distance debate and is one of many venues that fans believe becomes obsolete when the biggest hitters roll into town.
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Celebrities love the Alfred Dunhill – but it’s a pro golf event
Then there’s the Pro-Am. The week Ian Botham, Kevin Pietersen and Piers Morgan wait for all year round. They book these four days in their diaries before their waterproof trousers can dry from the previous year.
Four rounds of celebrity amateurs, too. Can they not just play a couple? It’s a professional golf event.
The format dictates that 168 players are paired with a Pro-Am partner. A 54-hole cut puts the top 60 and ties in the championship leaderboard through to the final round, plus the top 20 leading teams.
They aren’t all celebrities, I should say. Fitzpatrick won the team event with his mother in 2023. That was heart-warming, so how about just doing family members and friends?
Don’t worry about offending Ronan Keating, or Peter Jones off Dragon’s Den. Let them play 36 holes at most. Then, get down to business and let the field fight for the title at the weekend.
It’s always a good field, too. MacIntyre, Fitzpatrick, Tommy Fleetwood, Tyrrell Hatton, Brooks Koepka and Bubba Watson line up in 2026.
The event isn’t being done justice in its current form, which includes a mightily bloated field, at golf courses which take hours to play with redundant qualities, and during a time of year when scoring is astronomically low, and the weather is completely miserable.
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