Six of the best! Scotland set for best-ever stretch of golf events

Hang on to your cap if you’re a golf fan as the best stretch of events in the game ever witnessed in Scotland is coming your way over the next five weeks.

In that time, a total of six top professional events are taking place, the highlight, of course, being the 150th Open at St Andrews. That will be attended by a record 290,000 fans, but excitement has also been building about those other tournaments and rightly so.

Next week’s Genesis Scottish Open, which gets the ball rolling, will feature the strongest-ever field for a DP World Tour - formerly the European Tour - event, with 14 of the game's top-15 ranked players heading for The Renaissance Club in East Lothian.

An equally-strong line up is shaping up for the Trust Golf Women’s Scottish Open, which is taking place at Dundonald Links in Ayrshire the week before a mouth-watering first staging of the AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield.

Add in the Senior Open Presented by Rolex, which is being held on the King’s Course at Gleneagles in another first, and the Hero Open, an event on the DP World Tour, taking place at Fairmont St Andrews for the second year running and it’s a lip-licking run of golf.

“I think if we are really honest, this is unprecedented and will never happen again in our lifetime,” said Paul Bush, VisitScotland’s Director of Events, in an exclusive interview with Scotland on Sunday. “It is absolutely historic that we have managed to pull together, with partners, this unbelievable rich tapestry of golf over the next few weeks.”

The 40th edition of the Scottish Open will create history as the first co-sanctioned event between the DP World Tour and PGA Tour. It boasts a prize fund of $8 million, which, of course, is a lot less than being offered at the new LIV