By Steve Scott, golf correspondent

ALASTAIR FORSYTH admits he’s had a streaky sort of season, but the Scot aims to get the sort of inspiration he had for three weeks in April when he tees off in the Barclays Scottish Open at Loch Lomond this week.

Forsyth won the Madeira Open on the European Tour, and was narrowly edged out in a play-off in Portugal two weeks later as he seemed to take up the mantle of being top Scot on the world rankings—a position he held for much of June until Colin Montgomerie’s second place in France a fortnight ago.

Since then his form has been up and down, but he feels being back home for the Scottish Open could give him the lift he needs

“It’s a nice pressure to be here—the one tournament of the year I really look forward to,” he said yesterday.

“We get well looked after, and the course is fantastic and it’s got everything going for it and we manage to attract a great field—and this is very important for the Scottish Open.

“My form’s been a bit indifferent recently, but I had a good session on the range with Bob Torrance yesterday and picked up on a few things which we have worked on, and I’m feeling a little bit better, so I’m looking forward to the event.

“It’s been frustrating, because I started the year very poorly and then—after two or three weeks in a row where I won once—nearly won again and the form was really good, my form kind of dipped again over the last couple of months. It’s been a strange season, because I had a couple of weeks when I saw that if I can play at top form, the results will come.

“We’ve been playing some really good tournaments really, and I haven’t been taking my best game to them, or anywhere near my best game.

“I’m just going to try and get back to the form that I had early on in the year, and then I can hopefully start to compete again.”

Working with his veteran swing coach on the range raised his spirits, however.

“I’ve been away trying to play and struggling away and not really totally sure what to work on, you know—so it was good yesterday to get some quality time in here and have Bob look at what was going on, and we both had ideas.

“We saw a few things that were going on in my swing and it felt different this morning, so hopefully I’ll be in good form for this week and the rest of the season.”

Forsyth was backing the clubgolf programme to introduce children to the game, which is celebrating its fifth anniversary this year with a 25% rise in the numbers involved.

A total of 31 local authorities are involved in the programme, and more than 33,400 primary five children were introduced to the game this year.

He said, “The most important thing is the more youngsters that we can get a golf club in their hands at a young age and develop a love of the game and the more people who can get access to the game then the more chance of developing some top players.

“This makes it a bit easier for kids to get involved, because it was always very difficult before.

“It was almost the case that if your father or aunts or uncles didn’t play golf, you didn’t get a chance—now they can get a chance to pick up a club and hopefully find the love of the game that we all have found.”