Former Scottish Golf president David Fleming carried off his duties as a referee at the 150th Open Championship without a hitch.
Portlethen captain David, 64, was in action on all four days at St Andrews, as Australian Cameron Smith went on the lift the famous old Claret Jug.
David, who has plenty of experience officiating in not just golf, but as a former Highland and Junior football referee, said: “It was an amazing week with fantastic crowds and a worthy winner.
“Many of the fans were wanting Rory McIlroy to win, but to be honest Rory didn’t lose it, Cameron won it with an amazing stretch of play.
“As far as rulings were concerned, there were very few as St Andrews is a relatively clean course.
“I had a few small rulings with Sadom Kaewkanjana (Thailand), Ben Campbell (New Zealand) and Sheffield amateur Barclay Brown in the second group out on the first day behind Paul Lawrie’s group and less in later games.
“The total amount of rulings reduced from about 120 on the Thursday to about 60 on the other days, so it ran really smoothly.”
David refereed the group of Jack Floydd (England), Ronan Mullarney (Ireland) and Lars van Meijel (Holland) on the second day, before joining US Open champion Matthew Fitzpatrick and Min Woo Lee on Saturday, then Brown and Danny Willett on the final day.
“The players were all good company and, although as referees we don’t want to disturb players and therefore don’t try to start any conversations, most chat away and were all really friendly towards us,” added David.
David acted as a referee at The Open at Royal St George’s in Kent last year after Covid restrictions prevented overseas officials from travelling.
The former corporate banker was also the referee at both the Scottish Amateur Championship finals at Crail in 2019 and Murcar last year.
David was an invited guest when representing Scottish Golf at The Masters at Augusta in April when his tenure as president ended.
His next assignments are at the Paul Lawrie Par 3 tournament at the beginning of August and Scottish Girls Under 14/16s tournament at Forfar the following week.
The pull Monty – Golf legend serves Culter punters in St Andrews
It’s not often thirsty golf fans are served by an eight-time European Tour Order of Merit winner.
But that’s what happened to Scott Spiers and Dave Morgan when they nipped into the Greyfriars Inn at St Andrews for lunch during the first day of The Open.
The two Peterculter members were gobsmacked when Colin Montgomerie appeared behind the wicket.
“Monty was being followed by a film crew and he just stepped behind the bar to pour us a pint,” said Scott.
“He was great fun and we had a bit of banter about who would win.”
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