Scotland’s Stephen Gallacher will have extra strong memories in teeing-up in this week’s inagurual Bahrain Championship.

The DP World Tour was last in the Middle East Island kingdom early in 2011 when Gallacher brilliantaly finished just two shots behind England’s Paul Casey in the first hosting of the Volvo Champions event.

However growing unrest in the region led to the Bahrain F1 Grand Prix, and set to he held some five weeks following the Volvo hosted event, to being cancelled while Volvo electred to move their tournament in 2012 to Durban in South Africa.

Joining Gallacher this week among a handful of players who were in Bahrain for the Volvo Champion include victorious 2018 Ryder Cup captain Thomas Bjorn and Matteo Manassero, with Manassero aged 17-years and 10 months.

Gallacher, who was two years shy of winning back-top-back Dubai Desert Classic titles, capped his 2011 Bahrain with a blistering second round 64 that included six birdies mid-round on the Colin Montgomerie redesigned course where oil pipelines run down the side of some of the holes.

Bjorn finished mid-field that week and he’d delighted to return to Bahrain, and in what is the fifth of six events in this year’s Middie East Swing.

He said: “The course is good, very good. I think it builds on the first three weeks really.

“Conditions have been amazing this year and we’ve got people working very hard to produce some great venues and this is another one that sets up nicely.

“Most of the guys in the field weren’t here when we played here last time so it will be a new experience for them, but it’s a nice week, a nice place and we enjoy golf courses like this. It’s a bit different.

“The first three weeks have been flat greens, a lot of small greens, and this week they’re big, undulating and they ask a lot of questions, different questions to the first three weeks”.

And joining this week’s event is Bjorn red-hot twin countrymen in Rasmus and Nicklas Hojgaard, each runner-up last week, and with Bjorn backing the pair to represent Denmark in August’s Oympic Games in Paris.

Bjorn said: “I think it is important for golf in our country that it is an Olympic sport and that we try with the talent that we have to see if we can win some medals because in a country like Denmark it can change the view of a sport and it can be part of a national movement which the Olympics always is for a small country.

“To try and win a medal is a big goal of ours and with the talent we have I see no reason why we couldn’t.”

Gallacher is among seven Scots in the rich $US 2.5m Bahrain field.