The oldest swinger in town can still hit the high notes. At the age of 49, Euan McIntosh put on a terrific show to win the Scottish Amateur Championship over the Rosemount course at Blairgowrie.
The Glasgow-born golfer, who had a stint in the professional ranks and had a 10-year break from the game before being re-instated as an amateur, became the oldest player to win the national title since the celebrated Charlie Green in 1983 with a 3&2 win over Ranfurly teenager Jamie Stewart.
There may have been a 31-year age gap but McIntosh, the Scottish amateur order of merit winner in 2016, drew on all he experience, as well as a fine chipping and putting display, to claim a memorable conquest.
Some pearls of wisdom from his coach, Ian Rae, prior to the championship also aided his assault on the crown over the six days of competition in Perthshire.
“I tell you this right now, I would not have won my second round match, had I not spoken to Ian,” he said.
“He gave me a tip that transformed the way that I play matchplay, because I haven’t performed well in matchplay since I came back in 2016.
“He basically told me to stop focusing on what my opponent was doing and to ask myself, ‘what am I going to do?’
“Forget what they have done, focus on what you can control, and that is what I did over every shot from then on.
“It feels amazing and it hasn’t sunk in yet. To win this championship at 49 is great.”
One-up after the first 18-holes of a nip-and-tuck encounter - the duo traded eagles on the 11th as they went toe-to-toe - McIntosh doubled his lead on the first hole of the afternoon only for Stewart to hit back with a brace of birdies.
McIntosh upped the ante with birdies at the ninth, 10th and 14th to move to the brink of success and his win was confirmed when Stewart three-putted for a costly bogey on the 16th.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here