Bob MacIntyre at 30: Where Scotland's No 1 is right now and what he wants before next birthday milestone

He sits 17th in the Official World Golf Ranking, which, to add some perspective, is 129 spots higher than the next best Scot in Calum Hill, followed by Ewen Ferguson in 203rd spot then Grant Forrest in 225th position. The birthday boy is - appropriately - 30th on the FedEx Cup points and on course to make the PGA Tour’s season-ending Tour Championship for a third year in a row.

Sitting 65th in the Race to Dubai Ranking, he’s got a bit of work to do to take his DP World Tour season the full distance as well, but will be hoping to use a BMW PGA Championship appearance next month then an Alfred Dunhill Links Championship title defence on Scottish soil a few weeks later to take care of that situation.

MacIntyre’s best chance to land a win so far this season came in the Valero Texas Open, which he led by four shots at the halfway stage. A missed opportunity there definitely stung, with the left-hander admitting in a recent social media post that he’s not had his “best stuff” since then. As a consequence, a major campaign he’d been so excited about after finishing runner-up in the 2025 US Open at Oakmont didn’t turn out nearly as well as he’d been hoping for.

In the most recent of those outings in the game’s marquee events, he was in a position heading into the weekend in The 154th Open at Royal Birkdale where he had high hopes of landing the title he now wants more than any other after already knocking off the Genesis Scottish Open. A frustrating weekend, though, was capped by him being one of just two players to receive a code of conduct warning in the Claret Jug event.

It won’t have rested easy with some people that MacIntyre, who, incidentally, signed autopgraph after autograph that week, said he “expects to get a few of them in my career” due to the fact he is someone who “runs hot”. What needs to be factored in here, though, is that we are talking about a professional sportsman - just think Andy Murray, for example - who has seen his own expectations go through the roof over the past two-and-a-half years or so and certainly isn’t someone who is happy with second best, something that has no doubt been developed through his shinty career.

During a current break, which included a hit last week at Pollok Golf Club in Glasgow, MacIntyre reflected on his season so far and shared what he’d come up with in his social media post. “Despite some frustrating results, statistically my game has been better than last year, CRAZY GAME,” he wrote. “Went searching for things through equipment and neglected the basic fundamentals of my golf swing. As a golfer, you’re always trying to improve and thought I could make a massive improvement with approach play and it kind of backfired.

“So, since the US Open, we have tweaked my irons with Titleist and results have been far better. Had a chance at the Scottish Open again, which was a great feeling, and had a good start at The Open but never got anything going over the weekend. Off the course, life has changed for the better (becoming a dad to son Findlay earlier in the year) but definitely taken some getting used to for sure.”

In less than a decade, the boy from Oban has achieved an awful lot and a win over the coming few weeks, whether on the PGA Tour or DP World Tour, will certainly be in his sights. Looking in the longer term, MacIntyre won’t want to miss out on a centenary edition of the Ryder Cup at Adare Manor next September and, by the time he turns 40, that major is the one thing he’ll definitely want to be ticked off the list as well.