The Ayrshire team for the 2021 Scottish Men's Area Team Championship, to be played at The Kings Club, Inverness, from the 3rd to the 5th of September, has been announced.
The six man team selected have been drawn from three member clubs, Turnberry, Royal Troon and Irvine providing the players who will be bidding to win the premier men's team event in the country for a fourth time for Ayrshire, following previous successes in 1986, 2008 and 2015.
Five times Ayrshire Matchplay Champion Michael Smyth (Royal Troon) is the sole survivor from the team who lost out in the final of the competition when it was last played, in 2019 at Leven in Fife, and is joined by clubmate Blair Morton, who is making his first appearance in the Area Team Championship, following an outstanding season which saw him become the first player ever to win the Hillhouse Cup, Troon Links Championship and Royal Troon Club Championship in the same year.
Scottish internationalist Stuart Easton (Irvine) will bolster the strength of the team alongside his clubmate John Shanks, a veteran of Ayrshire's Men's Area team Championship squad, with two winners medals and having the distinction of holing the winning put the last time the trophy was won by Ayrshire, at Blairgowrie in 2015.
The new Ayrshire Men's Strokeplay Champion Jack Broun (Turnberry) will make his second appearance at the Men's Area Team Championship, having previously played in 20018 at Cawder, when the team were leading qualifiers going into the matchplay stages but lost out in the semi finals, the team chances having been badly hampered when they lost a player through injury before the matchplay rounds commenced.
Alongside Jack Broun, fellow Turnberry member Ruben Lindsay completes the team of six who will represent Ayrshire. The winner of the Scottish Boys' Championship in 2019, Ruben is presently the leading junior golfer in Europe and recently qualified with an exemption to play in the US Junior Amateur Championship.
The players will take part in strokeplay qualifying rounds on the first day, with the top eight of the sixteen Area teams qualifying to go forward to the matchplay stages which will take place over the following two days.
No comments:
Post a Comment