THE JOHNNIE Walker Championship at Gleneagles will take a year’s sabbatical for the Ryder Cup but return in 2015, the European Tour has confirmed.
As revealed in The Courier on Thursday, the event will be postponed in 2014 due to logistical difficulties surrounding the Perthshire resort’s hosting of the Ryder Cup that September. The championship will return in 2015 and will be played as usual next year, from August 22 to 25.
Graeme Marchbank, the Johnnie Walker Championship director, said that they’d made the decision “with regret but with no other option”.
“The Johnnie Walker Championship is a major highlight in the calendar for Diageo and a key commercial platform for the promotion of the world’s number one Scotch whisky, so we are naturally disappointed to miss a year,” he said.
“However, as the owner of Gleneagles and host of the 2014 Ryder Cup, Diageo is also working closely with our partners at The European Tour to help deliver a fantastic event and we are also working closely with the Scottish Government on maximising the wider benefit of The Ryder Cup to Scotland.
“Over the next two years we will be focusing all of our efforts on the goal of delivering the best possible Ryder Cup in 2014, and we are delighted that in 2015 the Johnnie Walker Championship will return to Gleneagles in partnership with The European Tour.”
Richard Hills, the European Ryder Cup director, explained that hosting both the Johnnie Walker and the Ryder Cup in 2014 was logistically impossible.
“The magnitude of The Ryder Cup is such these days that trying to host the Johnnie Walker Championship in the same season would have compromised both events,” he said.
The Tour had looked at re-scheduling the Johnnie Walker to an earlier week on the 2014 schedule but a suitable date in May and June could not be secured, with the preparation and construction of fixtures for the Ryder Cup due to begin in July 2014.
Alternative plans to play on the Kings or Queen’s courses at Gleneagles or a composite layout were rejected as parts of those are being used for practice facilities.
The Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles has been a European Tour fixture on the Jack Nicklaus-designed PGA Centenary Course since 1999 with champions including Adam Scott, Paul Casey (twice) Edoardo Molinari and Scots Marc Warren and Paul Lawrie, who won the title last year.
stscott@thecourier.co.uk