THE EUROPEAN TOUR stages one of the players’ favourite events this week, the Alfred Dunhill Links Championships.
It’s popular not only because it is a different style format than usual – with a combined professional plus team pro-am structure – but also because it is played over three of golf’s iconic links courses.
The pro’s play with a celebrity amateur partner for the first three days in a tournament taking in the Old Course at St Andrews, the Championship Course at Carnoustie and the highly-regarded Kingsbarns Golf Links.
The leading 60 professionals and the top 20 amateurs then play the final round at the St Andrews Old Course to determine the winners of the professional and team competitions. A very healthy prize purse of US$5 million is up for grabs.
Four-time Major Championship winner Ernie Els heads a world-class field that includes 11 other major winners, Charl Schwartzel, Louis Oosthuizen, Martin Kaymer, Rich Beem, Michael Campbell, Darren Clarke, Retief Goosen, Padraig Harrington, Paul Lawrie, Shaun Micheel, and Vijay Singh. The defending champion is South African Branden Grace.
Australia has a strong contingent that includes Marcus Fraser, Richard Green, Brett Rumford, Peter O’Malley, Andrew Dodt, Scott Hend, Daniel Popovic, Anthony Brown, Mark Brown, Jason Norris, Peter Wilson, Gareth Paddison, Steve Jones and Matthew Millar.
The “amateurs” include cricketers such as Shane Warne, Ian Botham, Mark Boucher, Jacques Kallis, Allan Lamb and other well-known sportsmen. There’s also Hollywood actors Andy Garcia and Hugh Grant and an A-list group of showbiz stars which includes Don Felder from The Eagles, Riverdance idol Michael Flatley, rock star Huey Lewis and Kyle MacLachlan of Desperate Housewives fame.
The action begins on Fox Sports Thursday 10.30pm to 2.30am.
Alfred Dunhill Links Championship Leaderboard
Alfred Dunhill Links Championship Leaderboard