It could have been one of those spoof videos in which the DP World Tour digital team pokes gentle fun at those players who they think will be able to take it. This time, the mischief was wrought by a crazed wind on the media day ahead of the Genesis Scottish Open, to be played 7-10 July at The Renaissance Club. Bob MacIntyre, Scotland’s favourite son, was in attendance.
The reason the event was happening so long in advance may have been down to there being five big events in Scotland this summer, each worthy of its own media day. The Genesis Scottish Open apart, they otherwise include the Open at St Andrews, the Senior Open at Gleneagles, the Trust Golf Women’s Scottish Open at Dundonald and the AIG Women’s Open at Muirfield.
Global Golf Post watched the goings-on at The Renaissance Club with interest while running through a list of players who would have handled the situation very differently from the 25-year-old MacIntyre.
Everything was running smoothly enough as Brian McLaughlin, from BBC Radio Scotland, conducted a grand interview in a relatively sheltered position below the club’s first tee.
In the meantime, half a dozen TV and newspaper cameramen were busying themselves setting up their equipment and, when it was their turn, they asked MacIntyre to step up on to the tee as if he were about to hit a drive.
First, a couple of flash-bearing tripods were swept off their feet by the elements. And after they had been reassembled, the MacIntyre golf bag, which had been carefully positioned so as to capture the odd sponsor’s name, crashed noisily to ground. The grinning Highlander helped to reinstate the bag before seizing a moment to whack his ball down the fairway.
After all of the above, the broadcaster returned. His interview hadn’t worked out, and it needed to be redone.
Though he mostly tries to keep to himself on the course, he loves seeing “smiling faces out of the corner of my eye” and hearing a few cries of “Come on, Bob!”
This was the point at which I could almost hear a certain man of six majors saying, “Sorry, chaps, you’ve had your chance; I’m out of here.” MacIntyre, for his part, revelled in a bit of banter with the guilty party before starting all over again.
Never, for a moment, had there been any suggestion that this owner of two top-10 finishes in the Open – at Royal Portrush in 2019 and again at Royal St. George’s last year – had better things to do than hang around with a series of wind-thrown media men and women.
Besides being the most likeable of golfers, MacIntyre is the least ostentatious of men, and probably the only one who would have a fit were Tiger Woods to put his name down beside his for a practice round.
“Tiger’s the only player of whom I’m still in awe,” MacIntyre said. “It’s the buzz of his crowd that gets to you as much as anything else.” (In the third round at this year’s Masters, when MacIntyre lost his ball at the 11th and had no alternative but to walk back to the tee where Woods and Kevin Kisner were waiting to hit, he kept his head down for rather longer than was necessary before hot-footing it back down the fairway.)
As a general rule, MacIntyre is at his best playing in front of a crowd and, for the purposes of the Scottish Open and again at the Open, he could well end up with his favourite combination of a home crowd at his back and a linksland wind creating much the same havoc as it did last week.
When things had quietened down, GGP asked McIntyre to dig a bit deeper into what he likes from his fans. He didn’t have to think about it for too many seconds. Though he mostly tries to keep to himself on the course, he loves seeing “smiling faces out of the corner of my eye” and hearing a few cries of “Come on, Bob!”
Is there anything he doesn't want to hear?
“It’s when I hit a bad shot and someone says, 'What was that?’ ”
Lewine Mair
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