Scottish Strokeplay Championship returns to North Berwick

The National

5 days ago

Boris Becker, a smash-hit of a 17-year-old from Germany, would become the youngest Wimbledon champion that summer.
A couple of weeks before his conquest at the All England Club, Becker romped to his first top-level triumph in the Stella Artois Championships at Queen's Club.
His win wasn't enough to earn top billing in the sports pages of the Glasgow Herald that June weekend, mind you.
Above a report of Becker's barnstorming breakthrough down in West Kensington was the headline act of Colin Montgomerie and his five-shot procession in the Scottish Open Amateur Strokeplay Championship at North Berwick and Dunbar.
One likes to imagine that a 21-year-old Monty flicked through the pages of said newspaper, caught a glimpse of Becker's feat underneath his own write up and said, 'all credit to him' in that phrase of praise that would become a bit of a trademark.
Or perhaps he chirped, 'all credit to me' before pinning the cutting on to his wall of fame with gleeful gusto?
Here in 2025, the Scottish Open Amateur Strokeplay Championship returns to East Lothian again this weekend as the West Links at North Berwick stages the event for the first time since it co-hosted back in 1985.
The decades hurtle by, don't they? 'Is it really 40 years?,' gasped Montgomerie of this passage of time. It sure is.
Back in the day, a young Montgomerie had already underlined his potential by winning the Scottish Youths' title in 1983 before losing to a certain Jose Maria Olazabal in the final of the Amateur Championship at Formby a year later.
'Now on the Champions Tour, my parking spot at events is next to Jose Maria and he still mentions the Amateur Championship 40 years on,' smiled Monty of the Spaniard's gentle ribbing.
In 1985, Montgomerie was a 21-year-old student at Houston Baptist University in Texas and arrived back on home soil for the Scottish Strokeplay Championship as one of the favourites.
He justified that standing with a fine display of poise, polish and purpose on the east coast and eased to a victory which, at the time, was the biggest of his fledgling career.
'I'd just come back from American college and was playing better and better,' he reflected. 'I went into that event as one of the favourites and thankfully got the job done.
'The strokeplay was one of the big two amateur titles that I wanted on my CV and in 1987 I was able to win the Scottish Amateur Matchplay at Nairn.
'But I was thrilled to win that first title and it sent me on a really strong run for a few years.'
That success at Dunbar in '85 helped Montgomerie secure a place in the GB&I Walker Cup team and he would retain his spot in the side two years later before making the leap into the pro ranks not long after. The rest is history.
'I look back very fondly on my amateur career,' said Monty, who was the European Tour's rookie of the year in 1988 and won his first title on the circuit the following season in Portugal by a whopping 11-shots.
'When I turned pro in September 1987, I very quickly had to go from trying to beat Sandy Stephen, George Macgregor and Ian Brotherston – all very good players - to coming up against Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo and Sandy Lyle.'
A new generation, including reigning Scottish Amateur Matchplay champion Alexander Farmer, will tackle the delights, the rigours and the charming quirks of North Berwick over the next three days with an international field of 144 players gathering for this terrific links test.
They'll be hard pressed to put on a show like Englishman Dominic Clemons did in the championship 12 months ago.
Just along the A198 at Muirfield, Clemons conjured a quite remarkable performance that left onlookers scraping their jaws off the ground as he brought the formidable Open venue to its knees with a 24-under total.
His closing day rounds of 65 and 62 gave Clemons a record-busting 17-stroke win which blitzed the previous best of eight set by Barclay Howard in 1997 and matched by Tommy Fleetwood in 2009.
All credit to him, as Monty might have said.