Chris Robb heads for this week’s European Amateur Championship as Scotland’s national champion and the man in form but won’t change his plans even if he wins at the Duke’s next week.
The Meldrum House player, despite having spent the last four years in Tennessee, adapted better to the radically changing conditions at Downfield than his rival, Stirling-based Graeme Robertson, to win the Fairstone Scottish Amateur Championship.
It was Robb’s third successive ranking win, and with most of the attention this season on Bradley Neil and Grant Forrest the tall and elegant ball-striker from Kincardine O’Neil on Deeside has quietly become a top-rank player.
Unlike Neil and Forrest, however, he has no designs on the Walker Cup and another year as an amateur.
The plan is still to turn pro, even if he wins his fourth event in a row at this week’s European, which carries a place into next year’s Open Championship at St Andrews.
“I don’t know if I’ll go to Q School as an amateur or pro yet, but the plan is to turn professional at the end of this year,” said Robb, who completed four years at the Chattanooga University in the spring.
“This is a big confidence boost and it hasn’t quite sunk in yet. The wins don’t
usually do until the next day I find. But I’m pleased with how I played, even though I’m still working some things out with my swing at the moment.”
The 23-year-old didn’t have the greatest track record in matchplay, but a decision to play the championship “like strokeplay in my head” worked well.
Keeping his own score and trying to ignore what his opponent was doing, however, meant that he missed his first chance to break away in the final.
With heavy rain all day causing a complete transformation from five days of dry, fast-running conditions, both players initially struggled to adapt and the flurry of birdies and eagles dried up in the final.
The change was best measured at Downfield’s signature hole, the 11th, which had only required a gap wedge in for many during the week. But with the wet and wind against, Robertson was forced to hit rescue and carved it into the wild rough well right of the green.
Not knowing where his opponent was, Robb ignored the smart play of laying up and went for the green, hitting into the hazard at the front. A golden chance to take a firm grip was gone as the hole was halved in sixes.
In the afternoon round, however, the same situation presented itself at the same hole in the key moment of the entire contest.
Robertson had won two holes in a row to reduce a handy Robb lead to just one-up, but again the Glenbervie man found himself in between clubs for his second shot as the rain teemed down on the 11th.
He chose his rescue and hit the same wild shot to the right as in the morning, only finding his ball this time.
Not looking a gift horse in the mouth twice, Robb did lay up this time and a par five was good enough for the win.
At the next, the short 12th, Robb chipped in from 20 yards for a birdie two to go three-up and the final was effectively over.
“It was certainly different conditions to what we had all week but by the time you’ve played a course eight times like Graeme and I have it shouldn’t be that difficult to change the gameplan,” he said.
“After taking irons off so many tees this week you certainly saw the course with its teeth bared today .”
Robb will certainly be one of the favourites for the European being played at the Duke’s Course at Craigtoun, St Andrews. Saturday’s triumph was his third in succession after an eight-stroke romp in the East of Scotland Championship at Lundin, followed by the Cameron Corbett Vase win at Haggs Castle.
It will also move him into second place on the SGU’s Order of Merit and a certain Scotland senior team debut in the Home Internationals in a couple of weeks’ time.