Scotland could have the World's Best Professional Tour: Tartan Pro Tour season tees off at Iconic Royal Dornoch
- Matt Hooper
- 3 days ago
- 7 min read
The Tartan Pro Tour gets its 2026 season underway Today with the very first Official World Golf Ranking event to ever take place at the historic Royal Dornoch Golf Club. St Andrews' John Paterson, Gary Ward (Craigtoun Course), Scott Kerr (Fairmont St Andrews) and Aamar Saleem (New Golf Club) will feature in a field of 93 professionals and amateurs.
After the prelude at the Aberdeen Golf Links Pro-am last week, the professionals of the Tartan Pro Tour head to Royal Dornoch this week, and will make history. The Royal Dornoch Masters, sponsored by Farmfoods, will be the very first Official World Golf Ranking event played at the historic course, and many of Scotland's top emerging professionals will compete for what will surely be the most prestigious title of the season. However prestigious a win at Royal Dornoch may be, it is just the first of 16 events on the road to gaining promotion to the HotelPlanner Tour, and being part of a platform which develops aspiring and emerging professionals into competitive players who can take the next step towards the elite level of golf around the world.
Royal Dornoch is the first of several outstanding sites which the Tartan Pro Tour will visit in 2026 on its journey around Scotland, culminating at the PGA Centenary Course at Gleneagles in October. St Andrews will host two legs of the Tour, with the Fairmont St Andrews Torrance Course, and the Jubilee Course at St Andrews Links welcoming some of the rising stars of Scottish Golf. St Andrews' John Paterson claimed his maiden professional title on the Jubilee last September, and went on to play in the weather-affected Alfred Dunhill Links Championship two weeks later.
Leven Links will also host once again, along with Downfield, Blairgowrie, Montrose, Newmacher, Porthleven, Cardrona, the Paul Lawrie Golf Centre and Duddingston. Southerness Golf Club in Dumfries and Galloway will welcome the tour from 25-27 May. The course, on the Solway coast, was opened in 1947 and next year the club will celebrate their 80th anniversary.
There are many third level tours, in fact there are many major tours which will be looking on with envy at the 2026 Tartan Pro Tour schedule. Paul Lawrie is building a platform which bridges the gap between elite amateur and elite professional golf for Scotland's promising talents.
The leading 2 players on the Tartan Pro Tour Order of Merit will qualify for the 2027 Hotel Planner Tour.
In 2025 St Andrews' John Paterson finished 7th in the rankings, and he will be desperate to improve on that ranking by making a fast start this season. He will surely fancy his chances round the Torrance Course, where he has vast experience, and successfully navigated qualifying for the 2023 St Andrews Bay Championship, a former Asian Tour International Series event.
John starts the 2026 season as surely one of the leading contenders to earn one of the 2 HotelPlanner Tour after a fantastic season on the Tartan Pro Tour in 2025. after 30 appearances on the tour, he broke through as a professional, winning in stunning fashion at the St Andrews Classic presented by Fugro last September.
"I thought that the chances of me coming top 2 in the OOM were better on the Tartan Pro Tour than the chances of me coming top 5 on Alps. It’s also logistically a lot easier and much more cost effective. In terms of my development I think playing abroad would be more beneficial in the long run, as much as I love links golf it doesn’t represent the courses you see on the big tours."
John's opinion of the Tartan Pro Tour offering a better chance of coming in the top 2 is looking good after his sensational maiden professional victory at the St Andrews Classic presented by Fugro.
John was in the middle of the pack coming into St Andrews, despite a recent uptick in form. "There were a lot of positives from both Spey Valley (3rd) and Leven Links (5th), it’s been a very difficult year and my golf hasn’t been anywhere near the standard I know I’m capable of. My iron play at Spey Valley was awful, but I did take a lot of confidence from my play off the tee and around / on the greens. My iron play did progress through the final round and I hit a lot of good irons shots under pressure coming down the stretch which was big for my confidence."
The Jubilee Course is renowned as being the toughest test of golf across all 7 St Andrews Links courses, and routinely plays as the harder course during the St Andrews Links Trophy, but local knowledge and insight of playing the course regularly gave John a quiet confidence. "I’ve always thought there was a very low score on the Jubilee. The first 12 holes are very gettable if you get a favourable wind direction. The last 6 are very tough so you’re really trying to get as low as you can through 12 and then hang on. I was -9 through 13 in the practice round so I was able to draw on that during the final round.
3 was a very key moment, there’s two bunkers down the right which are around 310 to carry - we had it slightly downwind so instead of hitting 2 iron and leaving myself a 2 or 4 iron in, I hit driver over them and managed to leave myself a pitching wedge in.
Another crucial moment was 5,6,7, I managed to birdie all three of them after making double on 4, so it was great to come back so positively after the double. My birdie on 13 was a big moment to get to -9, it’s a tricky par three with a tucked right pin and I hit a brilliant shot to 3 or 4 feet. The biggest moment was my birdie on 17, another very difficult par 3 where you don’t need to do much wrong to walk off with 4. I wasn’t sure where I stood on the leaderboard but I thought I needed at least one more and to hit 5 iron to 15 feet and hole it was brilliant."
Last week at the Aberdeen Golf Links Pro-am presented by Farmfoods John was in a tie for the lead through 27 of the 36 holes, before a late stumble saw him finish in 6th place with rounds of 66 and 70 across Trump International Golf Links and Royal Aberdeen respectively.
This might be a platform for emerging professional golfers, and a third level satellite tour, but the future of the Tartan Pro Tour is very bright indeed, and if it gets to visit more of Scotland's iconic golfing destinations then it could well have an argument for having the best schedule in tournament golf.
Over the next few years it would be great to see the Tartan Pro Tour extend its schedule to 20 tournaments, visiting Scotland's leading inland and links courses, providing a platform to develop rounded professionals ready to compete on the HotelPlanner Tour and eventually the DP World Tour.
Loch Lomond Golf Club has been absent from tournament golf since it hosted the Barclays Scottish Open in 2010, and it has been sorely missed by golf fans and players alike. Several modern greats of the game won at Loch Lomond during its 16-year run on the European Tour, and it would surely be an inspirational venue for the players on the Tartan Pro Tour.
A Tartan Pro Tour event does not bring the disruption for members that a European Tour event does, with no temporary infrastructure currently required to be built on site, and the tournaments are typically played over 54-holes and take place midweek.
Scotland has some truly brilliant inland courses, many of which are already included on the Tartan Pro Tour schedule, but two more I would love to see added in the future are the Craigtoun Course in St Andrews, and Dalmahoy Golf Course near Edinburgh.
Craigtoun, formerly known as the Duke's Course, is now operated by St Andrews Links, has previously hosted the European Amateur Championship, and is the home of Scottish Golf, the game's governing body.
Originally designed by Peter Thomson, the heathland course is located at Craigtoun Park on the edge of St Andrews, and was owned by the Kohler Company and operated by the Old Course Hotel until 2025. The St Andrews Links Trust now lease the course and it is the 8th course under their stewardship.
The Craigtoun Course measures some 7,512 yards from the black tees and would provide a stern championship test to the players on the Tartan Pro Tour if it was to feature on the schedule.
Dalmahoy Hotel & Country Club, located 5 miles to the West of Edinburgh, has hosted numerous professional events since the course was built nearly 100 years ago. Now an independent hotel, the resort has hosted the 1992 Solheim Cup, the Scottish PGA Championship, Scottish Seniors Open, and three editions of the W.D. & H.O. Wills Tournament in the 1970's.
Playing more events on high level parkland courses will prepare Tartan Tour members for a future on the major tours of the world, which predominantly play on inland courses throughout the season.
Of course, Scotland has a majority of the world's greatest links courses, and to elevate the Tartan Pro Tour they need to stage events at some of the modern classics, particularly at Kingsbarns and Dumbarnie. I would love to also see the Tartan Pro Tour stage events at Prestwick Golf Club and the Musselburgh Old Links, honouring the history of the sport, as two of the first three courses to host The Open Championship.
Scotland has so many great golf courses, with a variety of beauty and challenge unlike anywhere else in the world, and all are potential venues for Scotland's premier professional golf platform, preparing our talented young golfers for a career in the sport. Yes, Scotland does potentially have the World's Best Professional Tour.
SHANK will round up the news from each round Tuesday to Thursday, and cover the tour throughout the season. We will look to be on site at events later in the season and bring unique content to our audience from Scotland's Professional Golf Tour.
SHANK, by Matt Hooper
Matt Hooper is an Associate Member of the Sports Journalists Association, and founder of SHANK
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