He’d have been quite happy getting past the second round, but George Duncan went all the way at Royal Aberdeen to become the most surprising Scottish Amateur champion in a generation.
The 21-year-old from the Windyhill club in Glasgow actually thought he was pretty fortunate to beat Blairgowrie’s Connor Neil in the second round at Blagownie. He willingly conceded he had ridden his luck more than a little at times in the next four rounds to reach Saturday’s final against Andrew Burgess.
His only luck in the final, however, was that Burgess had clearly played a week’s worth of good shots in his stunning victory over Connor Syme in Friday’s semi-final. An approximate six-over for the 35 holes played were all it took for Duncan to be crowned champion, with three holes won by concession.
“I’m speechless,” he said afterwards. “I can’t believe I’m the Scottish Amateur champion, I didn’t even get past the second round at my first attempt last year.
“The final was the best I struck the ball all week and my short game really pulled it through for me. I just told myself today to go out and enjoy it and don’t get angry if I hit a bad shot.”
Tracking through the list of winners going back 30 years it’s impossible to find a Scottish Amateur champion who is more of a surprise than the student at the tiny Lincoln Memorial University in Harrogate, Tennessee.
The nearest comparable might be the champion from the last time Balgownie hosted the championship – Nigg Bay’s Donald Jamieson in 1980. While there have been plenty of surprise champions since, all of them were pretty well known to followers of the elite amateur game in Scotland and at least on the fringes of international contention.
Burgess would probably have qualified as such a champion and was a clear favourite going into the final having beaten Syme in their classic semi-final. All seemed reasonably well when he had an early two-up advantage through 13 holes.
From there, the Nairn man’s game just fell apart with three successive bogeys and Duncan’s two-up lead at lunch was never reduced during the second 18. The five-time Windyhill club champion was always in control once in the lead.
“I didn’t putt as well as Friday and wasn’t really striking it as well either,” said Burgess, also 21. “I don’t know what it was, I wasn’t nervous at all; I just wasn’t as hot as I was in the semi-final, which was pretty much the round of my life.”
Both players will get a world ranking as a result of reaching Saturday’s final and Duncan’s win lifts him from nowhere to eighth on the Scottish Amateur Men’s Order of Merit, but whether either finalist gets one of the two remaining spots in the Scotland Home Internationals team to play at Nairn next week remains in question.
The selection panel have already sparked controversy in the Scottish Amateur game with the decision to leave out Carnoustie’s Ailsa Summers, the Scottish Ladies Amateur champion, from the women’s Home International team.
The men’s selectors were probably hoping for players who were at least on their radar – like Elderslie’s Alasdair McDougall, beaten by Duncan in the semi-final, or Forres’ Jeff Wright, who lost to Burgess in the quarter-finals, to fill those last two places.
With leading quarter Grant Forrest, Connor Syme, Ewen Ferguson and Robert MacIntyre absent from the team because they qualify for the US Amateur at Oakland Hills by virtue of being in the World’s Top 50, Scotland will be hosting the Home with an already under-strength team.
If the selection panel stick to the same criteria – despite the furore it has caused – that saw them leave out Summers from the women’s team, then surely neither Duncan nor Burgess will be selected.
However with the leading quartet absent there may be a little wiggle room to allow the selectors to avoid the ignominy of leaving the national champion out of the international team for the second time in less than a week.
