Lawrie To Host New Euro Tour Match Play Event In Aberdeen

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The Scotsman's Martin Dempster has the details on Paul Lawrie hosting a new European Tour event in his home city of Aberdeen during the week when the world's best are whapping it around dreary Firestone.

Murcar Links, which abuts Royal Aberdeen and has hosted professional events in the past, will be the site of the 64-player event featuring a €1 million purse. It's a straight up, single-elimination event which isn't ideal but any match play on a links livens up the schedule and provides a welcome alternative to watching golf at Firestone!

The tournament, named the Saltire Energy Paul Lawrie Match Play, will be held at the Murcar Links Golf Club, on the outskirts of Lawrie’ hometown of Aberdeen, from July 30 to August 2, 2015.

Boasting a prize fund of €1 million, the tournament will see 64 of the leading players on The Race to Dubai play against each other in a straight knockout, match play contest.

Lawrie, a stalwart of The European Tour for the past 23 seasons, will host the tournament, with his 4 Sports & Entertainment management firm promoting the competition.

Murcar, by the way, has the narrowest entrance drive in golf.

Regarding Lawrie, I just finished the latest By The Minute Golf podcast featuring Lawrie and it's a tremendous listen. The former Open Champion talks about spectating at this year's Ryder Cup, playing with Bubba Watson at the Masters (and what a fast player he is), Monty, the past Ryder Cups he's played (he doesn't think Brookline was the travesty that others do) and more.

Definitely worth a listen.

Report: USGA Pace Of Play Summit Said To Be "Engaging"

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That's what Bradley Klein says after sitting through two days of Far Hills presentations on pace of play.

Since the plans for a live, pay-per-view simulcast still haven't materialized, we'll have to take Klein's word. He included this in his report discussing the amazing difference in pace depending on the spacing of tee times:

Yates is working closely with a number of golf associations on expediting flow and reducing bottlenecks, in part through more relaxed starting times that are separated by as many as 11 minutes. The effort has led the LPGA this year to reduce its average playing time by 14 minutes, from 4:54 to 4:40.

Finally, it sounds like the USGA has begun to compile data related to pace and green speeds, and Klein drops one of the first hints via Twitter of the shocking (shocking!) findings:

Not in his story but certainly the buried news item of the day:

Maybe this will allow for a greater focus on meeting #2 of the non-traditional means task force with Mark King and Bode Miller? The world anxiously awaits.