Alfred Dunhill Championship Weather Forecast

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The Alfred Dunhill Links Championship
Not the forecast Lawrie might have wanted

By Neville Leck

When it comes to the weather for this week's Alfred Dunhill Links championship in Scotland, you can expect a mixed bag of mild conditions.

And this at all three of the courses in the St Andrews area on the East coast of Scotland on which this celebrated event is traditionally played.

The Old Course at storied St Andrews itself, Carnoustie, also an ancient links course that can claim to be even older than the Home of Golf and tougher than any other links course on the Open Championship schedule, and scenic Kingsbarns, one of Great Britain's leading modern-day links lay-outs, are all close enough in proximity so as to enjoy very similar weather.

And this certainly seems to be the case for this week's weather forecasts for the three courses.

With the exception of some light, late afternoon rain on Friday, Golfweather.com has forecast mainly dry, mild days with only light, 3 to 4mph breezes on three of the four days of play, the exception being Saturday when winds from the west and north west are expected to gust up to 15 or 16 mph.

And that, by Scottish Links standards, is hardly set to alarm the stellar pro-am field which partners the professionals with golf-playing amateur celebrities in a separate competition from the purely professional main European Tour event.

Martin Kaymer, Paul Lawrie and Peter Hanson, the three members of Europe's victorious Ryder Cup team who so badly upset the odds in last Sunday's singles when they turned a 10-6 deficit on Saturday into a stunning 14½-13½ fight back victory on Sunday and who are due to tee-off in the Dunhill Links Championship on Thursday, will clearly be happy to learn that the sometimes torturous Scottish weather is expected this week to behave as close to its best as is possible.

Also happy at the news, I am sure, will be Europe's victorious captain, Jose Maria Olazabal, and his four back-room generals, Thomas Björn, Darren Clarke, Miguel Angel Jiménez and Paul McGinley, who are also in this week's stellar pro-am field.

Other World class professionals playing in the Dunhill Links are Dustin Johnson, one of the USA's most successful golfers in last week's Ryder Cup, and a strong South African contingent that includes the current Open champion, Ernie Els, Louis Oosthuizen, The Open winner at St Andrews in 2010, and the 2011 Masters champion Charl Schwartzel.

Other Major champions playing are three-time winner Padraig Harrington of Ireland, Americans Rich Beem and Shaun Micheel and Kiwi Michael Campbell.

Like all the professionals in the field, they will play a round at each of the three courses before returning to St Andrew's legendary Old Course for Sunday's final round.

Kaymer, the US PGA winner two years ago and briefly the World No 1, had struggled to regain his best form this year following a ski-holiday accident, but came good when he nailed a rock-solid six-foot putt on the last hole of the second last match in Sunday's thrill-a-minute singles to beat America's Steve Stricker and ensure that Europe would retain the Ryder Cup for the fourth time in a row.

And it begged the question; would this glorious 14½-13½ fight back triumph which saw him punch the air in unrestrained jubilation, put the most talented German golfer since Bernard Langer back on the winning track in the same way that sharing Europe's Ryder Cup triumph at Celtic Manor in 2010 had helped him generate the momentum to win that year's Dunhill Links Championship just a week later?

And while on the subject of momentum; someone who has had it for most of the season is the resurgent Lawrie, the last Scot to win The Open (1999), the first to win the Dunhill Links title (2001) and Europe's biggest singles winner at Medinah on Sunday where he whipped this year's FedEx Cup champion, Brandt Snedeker, 5 & 3.

Personally I believe that in his present mood, 43-year-old Lawrie might well be one of the biggest threats to the defending champion, Michael Hoey, who will be gunning to retain a title he won so impressively last year when he held off the likes of England's then World No 1, Luke Donald, and fellow Northern Irish stars Rory McIlroy and Graeme McDowell, who like McIlroy and Donald, will not be playing any golf this weekend.

Jet-lag and the emotional climb downs that tend to follow glorious times, or, if you are on the other side, painful moments, like the Miracle of Medinah tend to have form-wrecking after-shocks, but I believe Lawrie and men like the American bomber Johnson, another of my Dunhill favourites, have enough ice in their veins to rise above it all.

I do suspect, though, that Lawrie, who has spent most of his golfing life in the wet and windy climes of Scotland, would not have minded too much if Golfweather.com had been able to post a less favourable forecast than it has.

GolfWeather Editorial Department: editor@golfweather.com

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