Ryder Cup winner Stephen Gallacher opens up on the state of Scottish golf
Four-time DP World Tour winner and Ryder Cup player says shining light like Bob MacIntyre is essential
By his own admission, Stephen Gallacher was a tad shy when he started out as a tour professional. To the extent, in fact, that one Sky Sports Golf reporter could sometimes be heard muttering like Mutley, Dick Dastardly’s sidekick, if he was about to interview the Bathgate man because, in his words, he didn’t have much to say at that time.
In fairness, the same person would now be perfectly happy to be sticking a microphone under Gallacher’s nose because, boy, has he become a polished interviewee, as evidenced when he sat down with a small group of reporters at Gleneagles this week after being confirmed as one of the star attractions at this year’s ISPS Handa Senior Open at the Perthshire venue.
One of the questions he was asked was about the state of Scottish golf, with Bob MacIntyre, of course, leading the way at the moment as he continues to shine on the PGA Tour while the likes of Grant Forrest, Connor Syme, Calum Hill and Ewen Ferguson are all chiseling away on the DP World Tour, where players flying the Saltire enjoyed their most successful campaign last year since 2011.
“I think there’s a lot of guys on the DP World Tour, a lot of guys on the HotelPlanner Tour and they had lots of wins last year,” observed Gallacher of Hill (Joburg Open), Syme (KLM Open), Forrest (Nexo Championship) and MacIntyre (Dunhill Links) landing victories on the main tour while David Law (Czech Challenge and Finnish Challenge) and Daniel Young (Scottish Challenge) both tasted success on the second-tier circuit as they earned step ups to the top tour along with Euan Walker.
“We all know what it’s like,” added Gallacher, a four-time DP World Tour himself, including a breakthrough on Scottish soil in the Dunhill Links in 2004. “It’s hard to follow up years like that. But there’s a couple of really good kids coming through as well. Cameron Adam, first year, he’s doing alright. He played Walker Cup last year. Connor Graham is flying in America at college. He’ll be playing Walker Cup again this year. Euan Walker is a great player, as is Calum Fyfe.
“There’s a couple of young kids coming through my Foundation that are going to be superstars as well. It happens in cycles, doesn’t it? Grant Forrest won last year. Calum Hill won. Connor Syme as well. You’ve got Marc Warren still trying to get through the HotelPlanner Tour and a couple of other really good players there as well. You just need the one week. Just need the opportunity.”
On the back of missing the cut in both The Masters and PGA Championship over the past few weeks, MacIntyre will be feeling slightly down in the dumps at the moment. There’s no denying, though, that, on the back of winning twice on the PGA Tour in the space of a few weeks in 2024 and playing in the last two Ryder Cups, the Oban man is inspiring his peers.
“I think you always need a Bob, though,” replied Gallacher, who shares the same management company - Bounce Sports - as the world No 14 - to being asked if some people often forget about some of those other talented players when someone like MacIntyre is doing as well as he since taking his game to a new level since being crowned as the DP World Tour Rookie of the Year in 2019.
“I had Sam [Torrance]. I had Monty [Colin Montgomerie] and Sandy Lyle. You need the guys that are playing Ryder Cups. You need the boys that are competing in majors, winning the big tournaments because that’s the one you want to try and get. You want to be like him.
“All the guys I just mentioned grew up with Bob, so they’ll be thinking to themselves: How has he done that? “Hopefully they’re asking him: What did you do different? That’s what I’d be doing because Bob’s just took his game to the next level. It didn’t happen through chance. You could see it was heading that way. He got an opportunity in the big events and he looks comfortable now. It’s okay to play one Ryder Cup, he’s played two.
“He’s probably going to go on and do what Sam and Monty did and play six or seven or eight Ryder Cups. You need guys like that. We had Catriona Matthew doing that. You need girls like that. Role models.”
Gallacher, who will be teeing up alongside the likes of Ernie Els and Padraig Harrington in the over-50s’ Claret Jug on the King’s Course on 22-26 July, was asked if Scottish people can be too harsh on ourselves at times. After all, for all that Rory McIlroy has become just the sixth career grand slam winner in golf, there’s not 15 young Northern Irish players out on the DP World Tour.
“But that’s why you had Tom McKibbin come through and things like that,” declared the former Ryder Cup player of McIlroy’s fellow Holywood product. “Golf in Ireland is golf in Ireland, so Rory had guys like Darren Clarke to look at. Winning majors and playing in Ryder Cups. Captain in Ryder Cups. Padraig. All these guys.
“In Spain, Jon Rahm had Sergio [Garcia] and Seve [Ballesters]. Sergio [Garcia] had Seve. [Jose Maria] Olazabal had Seve. It’s happened here. Sandy Lyle, Monty. Sam Torrance, Andrew Coltart, Paul Lawrie, you can go through it all and you need a talismanic figure. You ask any footballer, they want to be like somebody. John Higgins probably wanted to be like Stephen Hendry in snooker. It just goes down through the years.
“So the more Bob’s up there, the more Catriona’s we can get, the more that your kids want to be like that and the guys on Tour did brilliant last year. We had a fantastic season of winners. We all know how hard it is and we had a spate of them. There’s no coincidence that if one of them wins, I want to do it like him. And then the other guy knocks on the door. And that’s how it works.”
Tickets for the ISPS Handa Senior Open at Gleneagles can be purchased online here
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