Newly-crowned amateur champion Bradley Neil has turned down a date in the star-studded Aberdeen Asset Management Scottish Open to lead a strong and confident Scotland six-man team into the European Team Championships in Finland next week.
The Blairgowrie teenager, fresh from his amateur triumph at Royal Portrush, was offered a place to play among the top stars, including Rory McIlroy and Phil Mickelson at Royal Aberdeen next week but instead has chosen to play for his country.
Neil made his full Scotland debut in the event in Denmark last year as a late call-up and helped the team to a silver medal in a narrow loss to England, winning all three of his matchplay games.
“Playing at Aberdeen would have been a nice thing to do, but I’m obviously committed to helping my team-mates go one better at the Europeans and look forward to the challenge,” he said.
“Playing in our European team was one of my goals this season.”
The Scots are the in-form squad in Europe at present, with two other top individual titles won recently and three members of the winning European Palmer Cup team at the weekend.
Grant Forrest, the leading Scot in the world amateur rankings until Bradley moved to number seven by virtue of his amateur win, won the St Andrews Links Trophy, the top strokeplay event in European amateur golf, while Jamie Savage won the Irish Amateur Strokeplay.
Forrest, Jack McDonald and James Ross were prominent members of Andrew Coltart’s Europe team that defeated the USA at Walton heath in the annual contest between the best university players.
The experienced Graeme Robertson, who teamed with Neil to win the European Nations Cup competition at Sotogrande in Spain in March, is the sixth member of the team.
“We really fancy our chances in Finland,” continued Bradley. “With the confidence we have, I think we have the strongest team probably since Scotland last won the event in 2009.
“It would be nice to go one better than last year, and hopefully I can do my bit.
We’re all leaders and we’ve all done well this year, all six of us are capable of performing in Finland.
“Every player has earned their place, and with national coach Ian Rae leading the team again, I believe we can do very well.”
The boys’ version of the European Team Championships is also staged next week, in Norway, and St Andrews’ Ben Kinsley, runner-up in the Scottish Boys Championship in April, is one of the team.