Two pay-to-play tournaments are being introduced on the Tartan Tour this season in order to maintain playing opportunities in the face of diminishing sponsorship.
Club professionals will be asked for a (pounds) 95 entry fee for the 36-hole events on April 16 and 17 at Panmure and May 13 and 14 at Falkirk Tryst, both of which are supported by Callaway, the equipment manu- facturer.
All entry money will go straight into the prize funds which are hoped to be in the region of (pounds) 5000 and, as an incentive to play, both tournaments have been declared Tartan Tour order-of-merit counters.
The concept is far from new, having been tried successfully on mini tours in America and nearer home on the Europro and the new over-40s tours, for which entry money is much higher.
''We are dipping our toe in the water,'' said Peter Lloyd, the Tartan Tour secretary, making the announcement yesterday at Scottish PGA headquarters at Gleneagles. ''The involvement of Callaway is keeping the entry fee down to (pounds) 95 and we will see how it goes. Obviously, the more entries, the bigger the prize fund.''
This will go some way to plugging the gap caused by the loss of two of the tour's main sponsors, Sunderland of Scotland and Aberdeen Asset Management, and with it two of its principal tournaments, while overall prize-money has dipped for the second year in a row to just over (pounds) 600,000.
There are signs of the same happening on the European Tour, which might be in a different league with prize-money in the region of (pounds) 75m, but they have still been unable to fill vacant slots this week and next. With the Masters taking place the following week, the tour effectively takes a three-week break until the Portuguese Open from April 17 to 20.
Lloyd was able to announce yesterday a new (pounds) 25,000, 72-hole tournament, the Craigie-law Classic, backed the new Donald Steel-designed East Lothian club. It will be staged from August 5 to 8.
That, too, will be one of the nine order-of-merit events. The others are the flagship event, the (pounds) 55,000 Scottish PGA Championship at Gleneagles (August 28 to 31), the Grampian International Freight Northern Open at Cruden Bay (June 3 to 6), and four multi-round pro-ams.
The term, ''assistant professional,'' has been binned and replaced by ''young professional'' defined as professionals under 25 or anyone in training. Four events were announced as counters for the Young Professionals' Order of Merit.
These are the Shotts/Pro-Guide tournament on August 24 and 25, the Paul Lawrie Meldrum House Championship on September 1 and 2, the KSW Championship at Balbirnie Park from September 23 to 25, and the Royal Dornoch Masters on October 5 and 6.
lJack Doherty's bid for Australian Amateur Championship glory remains on course after the Scot coasted into the quarter-finals at Mount Lawley in Perth yesterday.
The 20-year-old Scottish internationalist, who just squeezed into the knock-out rounds as the 30th of 32 qualifiers on Sunday, romped to an 8&7 victory over Scott Hunter in the opening round.
Doherty, last season's Welsh Open strokeplay champion, continued with a 4&3 win over Tom MacFadyean to set up a last-eight joust with No.5 seed Andrew McKenzie today.
Holder Kurt Barnes and former world junior champion Rick Kulacz both fell at the first hurdle.
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