We Scots may be small, but ‘we punch hard’ believes Robert MacIntyre – in all walks of sport.
The new Open D’Italia champion returned to home soil – and Tunnocks teacakes – this week for the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship just as the football team got the result against Ukraine in Krakow.
MacIntyre is friends with players in the Scottish national team but closely follows all Scottish international sport. He had dinner with rugby star Finn Russell when at the French Open in Paris last week. His love of shinty is well known.
‘It’s on my golf ball every day’
“I’m a massive, diehard Scot,” he said after a weather-blown day of practice at St Andrews. “(The Saltire) is on my golf ball every day I play. The country means everything to me.
“It’s something that happens in sport, when the country always gets knocked down, we get battered, we get told we are not good enough. I think it’s a nationwide thing, and it’s always about how we are not doing well enough.
“And you know what, for a small country, I think we punch hard. That’s all we can do.
“I’ve grown up playing all the sports, football, shinty, you name it, I’ve played it. And to see Scotland doing so well in so many different sports now, it’s brilliant and it’s only going to get better.”
There would be no better place to punch hard than in the Home of Golf, especially in a little bit of form – “that’s not happened much before,” he admitted.
“But this is different,” he said of the Dunhill. “It’s a nice, relaxed feel here.
“It’s my sixth event in a row, I can go out here and cruise around a little bit and enjoy myself. Hopefully the weather goes easy on us.
“it’s probably going to take another win probably by the end of the year to jump back into that Top-50, or something close to a win.
“But again, I can just go and play golf and shoot as low a number as I can. If that Top-50 happens by the end of the year, it happens. If not, I’ve got another couple of months to climb the rankings.”
‘It was a habit I had to change’
Bob’s switch of coaches and his struggles of the summer have been well-documented in the wake of his Rome win. But there’s been another small change in approach.
“My weight’s not really shifted in the last kind of year, but I’m putting more effort,” he said.
“I built a gym and everything at home, a simulator, all the works. It was a habit I had to change, and I can’t change it on the road without changing it at home.
“I’m laziest sitting on my backside at home, eating sweets and do that kind of stuff. But it’s an hour out of my day that I can go and do some gym work and just clear my head.”
Not that he’s completely gone rogue on us, though.
“I had two (Tunnock’s teacakes) last night,” he admitted. “And I had a little custard doughnut out on the golf course today.
“I’m not quite a lean, mean fighting machine yet!”
A 13th Scot entered the field late on Wednesday night with Blairgowrie’s 15-year-old amateur prospect Connor Graham added in place of Billy Getty, grandson of the oil billionaire tycoon J Paul Getty.
Connor, who won the R&A Junior Open at Monfieth Links in July, plays with Finland’s Sami Valimaki, starting at Carnoustie’s first hole at 9.22 on Thursday.