The European Challenge Tour – sorry sponsors, it’s the HotelPlanner Tour these days – has always been a great breeding ground of talent.
Learning the ropes, earning your stripes, serving your apprenticeship? You name it, the golfers on the second-tier circuit tend to do it in a highly competitive environment that can be as cut-throat as an appointment at Sweeney Todd’s salon.
Getting promotion from the HotelPlanner Tour to the DP World Tour ain’t easy but the current crop of Scots jockeying and elbowing for position are making a decent fist of it in 2025.
David Law, Danny Young and Euan Walker are all currently sitting inside a top-20 spot on the rankings that would be rewarded with a ticket to the main circuit at the end of the campaign
Ryan Lumsden, meanwhile, is currently on the outside looking in at No 31. The 28-year-old Anglo Scot, runner-up to Law in the Czech Challenge last month, could’ve bolstered his promotion push by competing in this week’s Irish Challenge but an invitation to play in a DP World Tour event and test himself at a higher level was too good to refuse.
A battling one-under 71 at a wind-swept Trump International Golf Links left him handily placed after the opening round of the Nexo Championship.
“I wasn’t expecting it all,” he said of the opportunity to tee-up in this £1.7 million championship.
“I’d really committed to getting off the HotelPlanner Tour this year and I have been doing okay on it. A couple of good weeks and I’ll have a chance to get my DP World Tour card.
“So, I wasn’t even thinking about playing here. I’d booked everything for Ireland then last Tuesday I was driving to play in the Scottish Challenge when I got the text inviting me to play here.
“I had a quick chat with my coaches as I really wanted to play, but I had to decide if it was the correct decision to change plans at the last minute.
"I’ve played well in Ireland the last few years but, at the end of the day, you only get so many chances to play in your home event on a golf course this good on the DP World Tour.
“It was something I couldn’t really pass up on. Everyone was telling me ‘go for it, go have fun and see what you can do’.”
Under the shrewd tutelage of Edinburgh exile David Inglis at Northwestern University in Chicago, London-born Lumsden was an impressive US college campaigner during his days in the amateur game.
He qualified for the US Open at Shinnecock Hills in 2018 which was quite a giddy high following the painful low of losing 9&8 in the final of the Scottish Amateur Championship at Prestwick the previous year.
Despite that sair yin, Lumsden, who joined the paid ranks in 2019, still looks back fondly on those amateur dramatics, both good and bad.
“The Scottish Amateur was a funny one,” reflected Lumsden. “I’d played great golf all week and woke up on the final day and just had nothing. Sometimes that happens in golf.
“But getting to play in those tournaments and for the Scotland team are still my best memories in golf. Playing in the European Team Championships and Eisenhower Trophy was a rare privilege. It was an honour, and it definitely shaped the golfer I am today.”
The keen cut-and-thrust of the HotelPlanner Tour, meanwhile, keeps Lumsden on his toes.
“The standard is really, really high,” he said. “If you go and shoot 10 or 12-under, as I have done a couple of times this year, you don’t really make much headway. You need to be pushing 16 to 20-under.”
Nobody was going to blast the lights out at Trump’s place yesterday and Lumsden was pretty happy with his day’s work.
“It was brutal out there,” he said of a relentless buffeting. “The thing with this course is that it feels like every single hole can get you. And then you chuck in 20mph winds gusting to 30mph today and it’s just very tricky.
“I struggled on my front nine. I just didn’t have it off the tee. But, when I made the turn, I knew there were going to be a few chances and I was like ‘come on, let’s go’.”
Grant Forrest, a winner on the DP World Tour in 2021, also opened with a 71 as did the aforementioned Young, who was then asked into the TV commentary box to pass on his links pearls of wisdom.
"I may last 30 seconds,” he laughed as he headed to the booth. “I’ll keep the language PC.”
Martin Laird, making his first appearance on Scottish soil since 2018, may have been temped to utter something a tad fruitier after a trying 77.
