When you’re huffing and puffing around on Scotland’s public transport system, standing in queues at a platform or shoehorned into a jam-packed carriage with a variety of bags and briefcases jutting and stabbing at your squeezed, contorted body, have a peer around and you may see Europe’s No 1 female golfer perched in the merry midst of it all. “I don’t drive,” said Beth Allen, the Edinburgh-based Californian who won the Ladies European Tour’s order of merit this year during a globe-trotting campaign that involved planes, trains but not many automobiles. “When I’m here I try to play somewhere near a railway which is great in Scotland as most of the links courses are right at them. Maybe I can approach some bus or train company for sponsorship?”

There’s certainly one railway company that could do with some good publicity. Allen, meanwhile, continues to thunder along on the right track. Having become the first American to top the European rankings, she ventured back across the Atlantic recently and successfully came through the LPGA Tour’s qualifying school to regain her card for the lucrative US circuit.

Allen’s stock has been on the rise over the last couple of years and three European Tour wins in that time have finally made those back in her homeland sit up and take notice. “I had my LPGA Tour a few years ago but I’d been back at the q-school about six times and I was always going back to it because I had failed,” said the 34-year-old. “This year I felt I was going back because they wanted me to be there. I was speaking to the media after every round, I was much more confident. It was a totally different feeling to previous years."

At 60th on the world rankings, Allen is the 12 highest American player on the global pecking order and an assault on qualifying for the 2017 US Solheim Cup team is very much part of the battleplan for the new season. While keen to remain loyal to the Ladies European Tour, Allen is well aware that her newly acquired LPGA Tour category will open up plenty of doors of opportunity as she seeks a Solheim spot. Juggling competition on both circuits does have its problems, though. “The LPGA only give you three releases,” she explained. “If there is a European Tour event against an LPGA event, then I’m allowed to play in three of them. If I don’t take a release, it’s a $25,000 fine. I would like to avoid that. It will be hard doing both but it can be done. I want to focus on the LPGA at the start of the year and then build a schedule around the majors. The Solheim Cup would be the ultimate achievement, especially as a Ladies European Tour member. It would be strange to be playing against my European peers that I often support but I’m a competitor and I’ve always wanted to represent the USA. If I could qualify, I’d like to think I’d be promoting the Ladies European Tour. . I’m going to do my best, try to get a fast start, get some qualifying points and make friends with Juli Inkster (the US captain).”

She may be patriotically shrouded in the stars and stripes but American girl Allen insists here recent success was very much made in Scotland. “A happy golfer is a good golfer and I am really happy here,” she added. “That’s played a massive part in my success. I came to Europe and felt I was accepted more. I could be myself. That gave me confidence and now I’m quite comfortable in my own skin to go back out to the LPGA Tour and not care about what everybody else is doing. I’d like to think I could help the next generation of Scottish players. I feel I have a lot to give in that sense and I understand what it takes to play at a college level and on both professional tours.”

Allen clearly has a driving ambition. And it doesn’t involve sitting in a jam at the Harthill Services. “I just hate driving,” she concluded. “I’d be less nervous standing over a putt to win an Open.”

The way Allen’s upwardly mobile career is going, she might just get the chance to test that theory.