ALTHOUGH she was understandably anxious over the opening stretch and spilled three shots before walking onto the third tee, Heather MacRae covered the ensuing 16 holes at Gleneagles in level par and never looked out of place during the Tartan Tour's flagship event when she became the first woman since Meg Farquhar in 1933 to compete in the £50,000 Scottish PGA Championship. MacRae's first round score of 75 gives her a chance of making the cut.
Showing good composure and an aptitude for ball-striking, MacRae signed for three over par and was at ease once she got into the flow of the round. While a short set-up on the PGA Centenary of around 6,600 yards led to complaints from some of the es
tablished professionals that the future Ryder Cup test was not sufficiently demanding, there was no shortage of men who struggled. Heather's brother, Andrew, for example, signed for 84.
"I was quite nervous at the start," MacRae acknowledged, "but I was two under for the closing four holes without making birdies on either of the par 5s. When I got here this morning I was fine, then I walked onto the tee and it was like 'here we go, history.' Once I calmed down and started hitting the fairway I knew I'd be fine."
The novelty of a participant wearing a skirt in Scotland's second oldest professional tournament drew a gallery of interested family and friends to the first tee as the 25-year-old assistant pro from Gullane golf club strode onto the course.
Once Scott Catlin from Greenburn, who carded 82, and Dundonald's David Ross Nicol, on 83, smacked their opening shots, the former British Women's Amateur champion, walked 45 yards forward to an advanced tee and pulled a drive into deep rough.
MacRae needed to hack out from the long grass and did well to restrict the damage on the first to a single dropped shot. "That's one of the differences," she cautioned on competing against men. "When I go into the long stuff, I just have to wedge it out. The guys can do more than that."
MacRae was less fortunate on the second where her drive landed in the face of a fairway bunker. It almost came as a relief when three more strokes from the back of the green ended with a 7.
By the time the shuttle which ferries the players from the second green deposited the former American junior collegiate champion on the third tee, much of the early nerves drained from her action. She made a gorgeous swing, drawing a lovely drive onto the left edge of the fairway. Once she kept a short iron shy of a tricky pin position at the front of the green, there was an opportunity to make birdie from 15 feet. Her attempt was only an ounce short and veered away from the cup with the final roll.
The young Scot was into her stride now and only a mental error on the sixth green halted the momentum. Although she was pin high on the par 3, her first putt swung violently away from the hole and cost her 4. Spirits were raised, though, on the par-4 eighth when she found the fairway, speared the green with a short iron and smoothed an 18-foot putt into the hole.
On the back nine, she wafted a 9 iron to a couple of feet for birdie on the 11th and overcame successive dropped shots on the 12th and 13th with two encouraging birdies from inside 20 feet on the 15th and 16th holes. MacRae's 75 was good enough to outscore two-thirds of the field. "I didn't really want to say whether I was going to make the cut or not," she said , "but having played and shot 75 I won't be as nervous in the second round."
Craig Lee, who shares the lead on 68, was astonished the PGA Centenary had been trimmed to 6,662 yards, rather than the 7,000 yards he was accustomed to playing on the European Tour last year. "It's almost a farce how short it is," he said. "It's insulting to the player to suggest we're not good enough to play off the back tees in our national championship. In previous years it's been a good test, but not now. The PGA want the scores to be low in order to justify more players taking part in their big event."
Gordon Dewar, secretary of the Scottish region of the PGA, defended the decision to trim the course. "It wasn't set up for one person or one group," he said.
LEADERBOARD(Gbr & Irl unless stated, par 72)
64 Retief Goosen (Rsa)
66 Richard Finch
67 James Kingston (Rsa), Phillip Price, Andrew Coltart, Maarten Lafeber (Ned), Danny Willett, David Lynn, Niclas Fasth (Swe), Gregory Bourdy (Fra), Marcus Fraser (Aus)
68 Bernhard Langer (Ger), Soren Kjeldsen (Den), Alvaro Velasco (Spa), Jarmo Sandelin (Swe), Rafael Echenique (Arg), Oliver Fisher, Stephen Dodd, Paul McGinley, Barry Lane, Thomas Levet (Fra), Henrik Stenson (Swe)
69 Robert Jan Derksen (Ned), Anders Hansen (Den), Branden Grace (Rsa), Peter Lawrie, Kenneth Ferrie, Chinnarat Phadungsil (Tha), Thongchai Jaidee (Tha), Felipe Aguilar (Chi), Matthew Millar (Aus), Markus Brier (Aut), Gonzalo Fdez-Castano (Spa), Nick Dougherty, Louis Oosthuizen (Rsa), Shiv Shankar Prasad Chowrasia (Ind), Paul Broadhurst, Miguel Angel Jimenez (Spa), Phillip Archer, Inder Van Weerelt (Ned)
Others: 70 Gary Orr, Colin Montgomerie, David Drysdale, Luke Donald. 71 Steven O'Hara, Rory McIlroy, Scott Drummond. 72 Paul Lawrie. 73 Callum Macaulay, Stephen Gallacher. 75 Marc Warren. 76 Alastair Forsyth.
The full article contains 940 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
