If there is one area where Dean Robertson, the head of golf at the University of Stirling in Scotland, feels a tad envious toward his opposite numbers in the States, it has to do with money.
“At Stirling, we’re on a shoestring budget compared to the budgets of the top universities over there,” said Robertson, who won the European Tour’s Italian Open in 1999. “We can’t afford the kind of support systems they have in place, though I’m currently lucky enough to have Lorna McClymont helping me out. (McClymont, a Stirling graduate, played on Great Britain and Ireland’s victorious 2024 Curtis Cup team and soon will turn professional.)
Where Robertson was crowned coach of the year at the recent Scottish Student Sports awards ceremony, Stirling’s Ross Laird collected the British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) men’s Order of Merit title and Ellie Docherty the women’s equivalent, a year after the university’s George Cannon and McClymont completed a similar double.
As Robertson said of McClymont, she would be in the top 20 in the World Amateur Golf Ranking had she been playing alongside the top college women in the States on a regular basis. (She ranks a career-high 84th.) However, just as the DP World Tour players cannot accrue world-ranking points at the same rate as those playing on the PGA Tour, so there are not too many counting points on offer for amateurs in Europe and the U.K.
Yet whatever the pluses of being based at a great American university, Robertson promises that those who choose Stirling will enjoy their own share of advantages. In his estimation, pride of place has to go to the fact that all the university golf under his wing is mixed.
Stirling’s men train alongside the women on the course and in the gym. When they are not tied up with outside events such as the R&A’s Student Tour Series – tournaments of match play and stroke play – Robertson often will send them out to play one another.
Of his last 15 years at Stirling, a public university about 40 miles northwest of Edinburgh, he marvels at how things have changed since mixed golf became the norm nine years ago.
“The girls have improved dramatically in that period,” he said.
Again, the arrangement clearly does no harm for the men in an era when they eventually could find themselves playing in events such as the Volvo Car Scandinavian Mixed. That is the event in which Linn Grant became the first female winner in DP World Tour history in ’22, and she was victorious again this year.
For another bonus, Robertson points to how his golfers probably end up with better degrees than those who head for some of the less well-known universities in the U.S.
“If they don’t keep up with their university work at Stirling, they probably won’t still be with us after their four years,” he said. “And if they don’t leave with a degree, they won’t have a Plan B, which is so important for everyone who is thinking of turning professional.”
From his own point of view, Robertson appreciates that he is not just coaching the 87 members of his various golf squads but is in a position where he can observe them at events.
He was, for example, at England’s Sunningdale Golf Club in late August for the Curtis Cup to follow McClymont, and he enjoyed watching Catriona Matthew, another Stirling graduate, display her usual attention to detail in her successful captaincy of the home team.
Regarding McClymont, who won two points out of three by way of a contribution to the victory, Robertson says she has the precious gift of desire.
“You’ve either got it or you haven’t,” he said. “Lorna goes to bed at night excited at the prospect of getting up to practice the next day. That her work ethic, her commitment, and her ability to manage herself are beyond belief will obviously stand her in good stead when she starts out on the Ladies European Tour. As, indeed, will her ability to plot her way ’round a golf course.”
On the advice of Paul McGinley, who played on three consecutive winning European Ryder Cup teams and captained a fourth, Robertson planned to visit Cypress Point in California to see the course which will host next year’s Walker Cup. He is the captain of the GB&I side and, while he does not, at least as yet, have any young men who are certainties for the side, he would not be surprised if there are not a few on his books who could be of interest to the selectors.
The players in question are Ross Laird, who has been competing in the Home Internationals for Scotland for the past couple of years; Alex Farmer, the reigning Scottish Amateur champion; and James Wood, who won the Scottish Boys Championship in July.
These are exciting times for Robertson and his charges – so much so that it is easy to see why school leavers are nowadays looking at university options on both sides of the Atlantic before taking their next step.