Top-ranked Scot Robert MacIntyre has returned home rewarded with the assurance from next month of unlimited invitations on the new 2021/22 PGA Tour schedule.
MacIntyre’s quest for full Tour membership ended Sunday with a share of 65th place in the regular Tour season-ending Wyndham Championship in North Carolina.
As it turned out, MacIntyre needed to have made the play-off to be assured of finishing inside the top-125 on the money list and the guarantee of full Tour membership for the start of the new season early next month in California.
MacIntyre’s PGA Tour earnings of $655,329 would have placed him 150th on the money list but also some $285,000 shy of that earned by the eventual 125th placed Chesson Hadley. Hadley sensationally regained his card by just one FedEx Cup thanks to a 16th hole ace last Sunday.
Scotland’s top-ranked Robert MacIntyre
In the process, the American denied former Tour No. 1 Justin Rose a Play-Off spot for a first time since the inception of the Play-Off Series in 2007 though Rose’s plight was not helped in three-putting the 72nd hole.
Rose said: “It was a knife-edge moment and it’s not nice when it’s not in your hands, but obviously it was in my hands up to 18. I didn’t do a very good job of that.”
MacIntyre also returned home to join Bounce Sports Management stablemates Grant Forrest and Calum Hill celebrate their back-to-back European Tour triumph and no doubt with the trio looking now to become the first double Tour winner.
Hill has this week off after his ‘cool-hand’ Cazoo Classic victory at the London Club. Only once in his final round did the 26-year-old Crook of Devon golfer show any real passion and that was a fist pump in birdieing the par-5 15th for the one-shot lead that took him to victory. Though the big smile of satisfaction on Hill’s face as he walked from the last said everything.
He said: “I just felt really comfortable out there. When you accomplish what you feel you can accomplish, it spurs you on. And gives you confidence as I continue to progress.
Calum Hill points the way for new caddy Dan Pattan. (Photo – Getty)
“Hopefully this win isn’t the peak and I keep pushing forward, and continue to win at whatever level I go to”.
Hill is also the fourth Scot within the past three years to come off the secondary Challenge Tour and win on the main Tour, and now joining MacIntyre, Forrest and David Law as winners on Europe’s top stage. Fellow Scots Ewen Ferguson and Craig Howie look set this year to graduate and join the main Tour next year.
And while full of praise for his male colleagues, Hill singled out also the efforts last weekend of Hannah Darling, winning the Girls Junior Open and Kelsey MacDonald performing well at the Trust Golf Women’s Scottish Open as great signs ahead for Scottish golf
Hill said: “When get a group of people who spur one another on, the camaraderie between everyone, it’s brilliant to see it. There are lots of really good players coming through from the Challenge Tour and it’ll be a really good group of guys out here.
“Also, it’s good to see the girls like Hannah and Kelsey are doing good things. as well”.
A big key to Hill’s maiden Tour victory was a change of caddy after quietly splitting with legendary bagman Ian ‘Wobbly’ Morbey after four top-10s in their 10 events since teaming last February, and team with Dan Parratt, who had worked in winning with Austrian Bernd Wiesberger and South Korean Byeong-Hun An.
However, Parratt was caddying for American Sam Burns at last month’s Scottish Open when Hill became aware he was available to switch bags.
Hill said: “Dan and I agreed to start working three weeks ago at the ISPS Handa in Northern Ireland.
“He was caddying in the same group for the opening two rounds at the Renaissance Club which was the first time I met him. We were partnered in the first two rounds.
“I had a change of caddie and he is on my radar as someone with a good bit of experience, old enough to have that but young enough to relate to. It seems like a really good fit and I’m enjoying my time with him”.
And in talking of caddies, it’s not lost that among the first to congratulate Hill on Sunday was Greg Milne, and the former ‘Rookie of the Year’ winning caddy to MacIntyre, who was caddying for England’s Jordan Smith in Sunday’s final grouping.
