A year on from its successful hosting of The 2014 Ryder Cup, Scotland is set for another celebration this week, as the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship celebrates its 15th anniversary.
Celebrities from sports and entertainment will join some of the European Tour’s own leading lights in the traditional pro-am format, played across three of Scotland’s finest links courses – Carnoustie, Kingsbarns and the Old Course St Andrews.
The tournament is renowned for its unique atmosphere, and for Ireland’s Shane Lowry it will be particularly special as it represents his first event back on European soil since claiming his maiden World Golf Championships title at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational, back in August.
Lowry, whose performance in Ohio earned him the Hilton European Tour Golfer of the Month award for August, has a strong record in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, having finished third in 2013 and sixth last year.
He starts the week in sixth position in The Race to Dubai and with a busy run of events coming up before the Final Series, he will be looking to make up ground on those ahead of him, including Branden Grace, who returns to action this week after impressing in America.
South African Grace, who is one place ahead of Lowry in fifth in The Race to Dubai, finished third in the US PGA Championship, having also shared fourth position in the US Open in June.
He won the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in 2012, the year he claimed four European Tour titles, and with two victories already this season, Grace will be looking to clinch a unique double, having won the Alfred Dunhill Championship in his home country at the start of the 2015 season.
Scotland’s Paul Lawrie, winner of The Open Championship at Carnoustie in 1999 and winner of the first Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in 2001, is part of a strong line up of Major Champions, along with Stewart Cink, Darren Clarke, John Daly, Ernie Els, Padraig Harrington, Martin Kaymer, Graeme McDowell, Charl Schwartzel and Y.E.Yang.
Englishman Danny Willett, who won the Omega European Masters in July, returns to St Andrews where he led The Open Championship at the halfway stage in July before finishing tied sixth. Willett, who has the opportunity to overtake Rory McIlroy at the top of The Race to Dubai, finished tied third in his last appearance in the 72° OPEN D'ITALIA presented by DAMIANI and was tied runner-up to Kaymer in the 2010 Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.
Meanwhile, some of those stars from Europe’s Ryder Cup victory 12 months ago return to Scotland this week. Joining Kaymer and McDowell will be the victorious captain, Paul McGinley, Thomas Bjørn, Victor Dubuisson, Stephen Gallacher, Lee Westwood and the man who secured the winning point at Gleneagles, Jamie Donaldson, who finished tied fifth in last week’s Porsche European Open.
The tournament also marks a return to St Andrews for Irishman Paul Dunne, who memorably shared the lead The Open Championship after 54 holes in July. Dunne is making his professional debut, as is Silver Medal winner Ashley Chesters of England, along with Gary Hurley and Jimmy Mullen, two more stars of Great Britain & Ireland’s victorious Walker Cup team.
The quartet will be hoping for a fairytale to match last year’s remarkable winner, Englishman Oliver Wilson, who claimed a maiden European Tour title in his 228th appearance. The former Ryder Cup player was ranked 792nd on the Official World Golf Ranking at the start of the week, but held off Richie Ramsay, Tommy Fleetwood and the then World Number One Rory McIlroy by a single shot to claim an emotional win at the Home of Golf.
