The Gleneagles Scottish Professional Championship will be truncated for the first time in nearly 50 years after heavy rain made first round play impossible at the King’s Course yesterday.
With former Open champion Paul Lawrie among those poised to tee off in the opening round, overnight rain continued into the morning flooding parts of the course, causing a delay to the scheduled start of play at 7.30 am.
Despite the concerted efforts of PGA officials and Gleneagles greenkeeping staff, the start was further delayed at 9 am and at midday the decision was taken to abandon the day’s play.
It means that the championship will be reduced to 54 holes the first time since Cruden Bay in 1966 that it will be played over less than the full 72. That year, play was limited to just 36 holes when John Panton and Eric Brown shared the title.
The Scottish PGA secretary Brian Mair is confident that the championship will avoid further disruption with improved weather forecast for the next three days.
“Despite the marvellous efforts of the greenkeeping staff at Gleneagles, there was no way we could get play underway today,” he said as he announced the cancellation of Sunday play.
“We will resume the first round on Monday with the original second round times, and on completing that we will commence the second round immediately.”
With the second round completed on Tuesday, a cut will be made to the Top 50 and ties and the final round played on Wednesday.
Lawrie, playing in his domestic championship for the first time in a decade, is a two-time winner of the title and one of a number of former champions in the field.
Ross Drummond, Graham Fox, Greig Hutcheon, Chris Kelly, Mark Loftus, Fraser Mann, Brian Marchbank , Jason McCreadie, David Orr, Craig Ronald and defending champion Gareth Wright are the other past winners in the draw.
Two women professionals, Nichola Ferguson and Heather Munro, are also competing.