The Ryder Cup will be ”coming home” to Gleneagles when the matches between Europe and the USA are played at the Perthshire resort in 2014.
First Minister Alex Salmond and officials from the European Tour and Diageo, owner of Gleneagles, started the countdown to the matches by officially announcing the dates as September 26 to September 28, a week earlier than the weather-affected match at Celtic Manor in Wales last year.
It will be only the second time the Ryder Cup has been played in Scotland (after Muirfield in 1973) but both Salmond and Diageo referred to the unofficial match between leading professionals of Great Britain and Ireland and the USA held at Gleneagles in 1921, an event which is generally acknowledged as the inspiration behind the forming of the Ryder Cup proper six years later.
The First Minister said: ”It was the inaugural match and the thing that started it all off. We think of it as the Ryder Cup coming home to this magnificent complex at Gleneagles, and that’s an exceptional thing.
”Every golfer who plays at all is reverential about the history of the game and what better history than having the greatest of all golf matches coming back to the place that started it so many years ago?”
Somewhat ironically given the storm raging outside the Gleneagles Dormie House at Tuesday morning’s official announcement, both government and Ryder Cup officials said they were ”comfortable” about possible weather disruption issues in three years’ time.
Salmond added: ”This is a major milestone and it’s good in November 2011 to start thinking about September 2014 and what a fantastic year it will be for Scotland with the second Homecoming, the Commonwealth Games and the Ryder Cup.
”This year the average temperature at Gleneagles was 23 degrees on those three days, in balmy sunshine. The statistics are great for September over the last 20 years.”
Richard Hills, director of Ryder Cup Europe, said they were comfortable with the date, which he said was a return to the traditional time slot for the matches.
”It’s very similar to the date in 1973,” he said. ”If the matches at Celtic Manor had been played this year, we’d have had three days of sunshine.”
Hills paid tribute to the First Minister and government agencies as ”outstanding” in engaging in the hosting of the matches and described Scotland’s clubgolf initiative which aims to introduce every nine-year-old to golf as ”a shot that’s rung out around the world game.”
”The initiative is outstanding and we’re proud to be a part,” he said. ”We know that the PGA of America is greatly impressed by clubgolf and that there is great interest worldwide in what Scotland is doing.
”Gleneagles compares very favourably with both The K Club and Celtic Manor (the last two venues) in terms of being the whole package. It sits in a triangle above Edinburgh and Glasgow and below Perth, has the motorway running right outside and a railway line.”
Also announced was Diageo returning as a partner sponsor to the matches under its Johnnie Walker banner and significant alterations to the PGA Centenary Course, which will stage the matches in 2014.
The 18th hole is effectively being rebuilt over the winter, with changes to the 9th and 10th also under way, but the course should reopen for play by May.