Scottish golfer who won twice on DP World Tour embarks on senior career

“You see a lot less hair on the top of the head, a lot of grey hair and maybe some expanding waistlines - and that’s just me,” declared Forsyth, laughing, after arriving on the Costa del Sol for the circuit’s season-opener at Aloha Golf Club.

A two-time winner on the DP World Tour - his breakthrough came in the 2002 Malaysian Open before adding the Madeira Islands Open six years later - Forsyth has spent the majority of the last 12 years involved in coaching at Mearns Castle on the south side of Glasgow.

Knowing that he’d be getting an opportunity to play on the Legends Tour when the time came, he used the PGA in Scotland’s Tartan Tour to try and stay competitive, winning the Northern Open and PGA Professional Championship in 2019 then landing a second Scottish PGA Championship in 2022.

“Yeah, it’s been a long time coming, to be honest, as I’d been looking at it for a wee while,” he admitted to The Scotsman. “I looked at the Champions Tour, but they have made a closed shop even more closed (due to a Qualifying School having been scrapped last year).”

Playing under career-money category

Referring to an exemption he’s playing under on the Legends Tour, he added: “I’m reasonably comfortable in the career-money category at the moment, though I don’t know how long that will last as that’s fluid and dependent on other people turning 50 and how the career earnings sit.

“I also knew that you get a year from your 50th birthday if you’ve won on the main tour, so I had that as well. But the career money one is where the future might hold for a wee while, so hopefully I can stay in that as long as I can.”

This week’s field is headed by a posse of major winners in Colin Montgomerie, Paul Lawrie, Michael Campbell and Jose Maria Olazabal while it also includes local hero Miguel Angel Jimenez, a 17-time winner on the Champions Tour. “It’s a wee bit of a ‘who’s who’ this week, but that’s great as It adds a nice bit of interest to it,” observed Forsyth.

Stephen Gallacher and Gary Orr, two long-time friends of Forsyth, are also now playing on the Legends Tour, as is David Drysdale, who landed a breakthrough win as a rookie last year. Lawrie is teeing up this week on the back of shooting a 63 in the final round of an event on the PT Tour in Portugal.

‘It will definitely be tough’

“The depth of the tour looks pretty strong,” said Forsyth, who racked up career earnings of £4.5 million on the main circuit and represented Scotland in the World Cup on five occasions. “The majority of the players in the field are still paying a lot. Some of the guys here have been playing on the Champions Tour, so there’s strength right through the field. So it will definitely be tough.

“Obviously as much as I’ve been playing at home and playing in the tournaments I’ve been playing in, it’s a very different level and not being as full time as the majority of the guys will be is something I’ll need to overcome.

“But my game is all right. I should be able to do okay at some point. I’ll probably know more once I’ve played in two or three events as it is kind of hard to tell at the moment when I’ve not played at this level for quite a while.”

Dane Soren Hansen, who played in the 2008 Ryder Cup in Louisville, is also making his Legends Tour debut this week, as are Chilean Felipe Aguilar, Northern Ireland’s Cameron Clark and Frenchman Anthony Grenier.

‘It’s been weird the last couple of days’

“It’s been weird the last couple of days,” admitted Forsyth. “Every time I turn around, I’ve been bumping into someone who has said ‘how are you getting on - I’ve not seen you for years’.

“On Tuesday, for example, I bumped into Anthony Wall, Simon Khan, Patrick Sjoland. Almost everyone in the field I haven't seen since I last played on the tour in 2014. So it’s at least 12 years since I’ve seen anybody really. But, yeah, I’ve been looking forward to it for a while. It’s nice to get back to this type of environment again.”