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Peter Forster has been named as the new captain of the Royal & Ancient Golf Club of St Andrews.
The 70-year-old Scot was nominated by the club’s past captains and will begin his year in office with the traditional Driving-In ceremony on the first tee of the Old Course during the club’s Autumn Meeting in September.
Born in Edinburgh, Forster was educated at Rannoch School before moving on to Agricultural College in Aberdeen. He started work on his family’s tenanted farm, at Peacehill, near Wormit, 10 miles north of St Andrews, before purchasing Peacehill Farm in 1990. He is now retired but remains a director of Peacehill Farming Ltd and Peacehill Gas Ltd.
Forster is well known in and around St Andrews. He became a member of the Royal & Ancient in the early 1970s and is a former chairman of its club committee. He was appointed as a Trustee of St Andrews Links Trust in 2003, and served as its chairman from 2009 to 2013. In 2020, he was elected chairman of the Inter-Clubs Liaison Committee in St Andrews.
The 18-handicap golfer also is a member of Ten Golf Club of St Andrews, Scotscraig Golf Club and the Seniors Golfing Society. He is chief locust of the Locust Golfing Society, and a former player and past president of Panmure Rugby Club in Broughty Ferry.
The Korn Ferry Tour, the PGA Tour’s feeder circuit, has announced plans for substantial prize purse increases across the next two seasons, with all tournaments offering at least $1 million prize funds by 2023.
In a move which will result in alarm bells ringing at other tours around the world, regular-season Korn Ferry purses will increase by 66.7 percent from 2021 to 2023, rising by $150,000 to a minimum of $750,000 in 2022 before hitting the $1 million minimum mark the following year.
There also are large increases planned for the three-event Korn Ferry Tour Finals, with purses rising to $1.5 million by 2023.
The Korn Ferry Tour currently awards 50 PGA Tour cards to its members, 25 after the Korn Ferry Tour regular-season finale and 25 after the Korn Ferry Tour Finals.
“The Korn Ferry Tour continues to play a massive role in delivering a pipeline of future stars to the PGA Tour on a consistent basis,” Korn Ferry Tour president Alex Baldwin said. “Today’s announcement is another step in ensuring the tour will continue to attract the best young talent while providing higher-quality playing opportunities for the entire membership.
“The numbers speak for themselves,” he added. “I don’t think you can change the fact the Korn Ferry Tour will always be looked at as a pathway and not as a destination, but I certainly think these purse increases will elevate how everyone looks at the Korn Ferry Tour, not just in professional golf in our country, but around the world.”
Liz Young became the second winner of a Rose Ladies Series event this year by heading the field at Woburn Golf Club. The English Ladies European Tour player, who initially came up with the idea last year of a mini-tour to help women compete during the COVID-19 pandemic, took the £10,000 first place prize for her maiden series victory when she was the only competitor in the 60-player field to match level par around Woburn’s Duchess course.
Woburn member Meghan MacLaren finished tied second with Chloe Williams. Gabriella Cowley, who won the opening tournament of the 2021 season at West Lancs Golf Club the previous week, finished joint 11th.
The Duchess Course is the shortest of Woburn’s three layouts at 6,555 yards but is tight and tree-lined, and that caused problems for most of the field. Dame Laura Davies returned a 79 to share 20th. Fellow Solheim Cup player Becky Brewerton shot 84 to place 40th.
The International team for this year’s Arnold Palmer Cup will include seven of the players who beat the United States in last year’s match at Bay Hill.
England’s Alex Fitzpatrick (Wake Forest), Thailand’s Puwit Anupansuebsai (San Diego State), China’s Yuxin Lin (Florida), Sweden’s Ingrid Lindblad (LSU), Spain’s David Puig (Arizona State), France’s Pauline Roussin-Bouchard (South Carolina) and Austria’s Emma Spitz (UCLA) all were part of the victorious 2020 squad. They will be joined for the event at Rich Harvest Farms, Illinois, on 11-13 June by a second French woman in Agathe Laisné (Texas), who was part of the winning team in the 2019 contest.
The rest of the International team will comprise Scotland’s Penny Brown (Stirling), Eugenio Chacarra (Oklahoma State), Ana Peláez Trivino (South Carolina) and Julián Périco (Arkansas) of Spain, Belgium’s Adrien Dumont de Chassart (Illinois), Mexico’s Isabella Fierro (Oklahoma State), China’s Bo Jin (Oklahoma State) Swedish quartet Karen Fredgaard (Houston), Hugo Townsend (Boise State), Beatrice Wallin (Florida State) and Pontus Nyholm (Campbell), Ireland’s Allan Hill (Maynooth) and Lauren Walsh (Wake Forest), Thailand’s Virunpat Olankitkunchai (Maryland), and England’s Joe Pagdin (Florida) and Emily Price (Kent State).
The US team is headed by Emilia Migliaccio (Wake Forest), who becomes the first American to play in four Palmer Cup teams. It also includes Ricky Castillo (Florida) and Pierceson Coody (Texas) who represented their country in last week’s Walker Cup at Seminole.
The R&A has organised a trio of tributes to mark the 10th anniversary of Seve Ballesteros’s death
The Spanish superstar passed away on 7 May 2011, aged just 54, following a battle with cancer, having been diagnosed with a brain tumour two years earlier.
Tributes comprise a full-length documentary film, featuring contributions from his family and professional peers, a new photobook by renowned golf photographer David Cannon, and an 18-month exhibition at the British Golf Museum in St Andrews.
“Seve always was the supreme showman and he played a huge part in deepening my love of golf,” R&A chief executive Martin Slumbers said. “I hope that fans will enjoy these wonderful tributes that tell the story of this charismatic, flamboyant and inspirational golfer who is without doubt one of the greatest of all time.
“Sadly, he was taken from us much too young and we must settle for the memories. But what glorious memories they are.”
A share of the proceeds from these tributes will be donated to the Seve Ballesteros Foundation, which introduces young people into golf and raises money for scientific research used for the treatment of brain cancer.
Collin Morikawa and Xander Schauffele have announced plans to play in this year’s Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open at the Renaissance Club, 8-11 July, the week before the Open Championship at Royal St George’s.
Reigning PGA champion Morikawa and world No 4 Schauffele will be joined in the field by Englishman Tyrell Hatton, who has risen to No 8 in the world ranking on the back of a series of wins including this year’s Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship.
Morikawa is making his competitive debut in Scotland.
“I’m excited to play in Scotland for the first time,” he said. “I’m looking forward to making my debut in the Aberdeen Standard Investments Scottish Open and playing in the Home of Golf. I’ve heard a lot about the tournament, and it will be a lot of fun to tee up on the European Tour again.”
Schauffele finished tied second behind Francesco Molinari in the 2018 Open Championship at Carnoustie, his last visit to Scotland.
The London Club will host this year’s English Open, the European Tour has announced. The Jack Nicklaus-designed Heritage course will host the tournament 12-15 August in the final event of the 2021 UK Swing.
The Kent club is a former three-time European Tour venue. It staged the 2008 and 2009 European Opens, won respectively by Ross Fisher and France’s Christian Cévaër. Finland’s Mikko Ilonen defeated Henrik Stenson to win the 2014 Volvo Match Play at the London Club.
This year’s postponed Queen Sirikit Cup has been rescheduled for next March. Singapore’s Laguna National Golf & Country Club will stage the Asia-Pacific’s premier amateur team championship for women. It had been scheduled for 23-27 August.
Colin Callander and Alistair Tait