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Scott Borrowman and Laura Murray win R&A Foundation Bursars’ Tournament at St Andrews

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Scott Borrowman and Laura Murray were the two winners in a very closely-fought R&A Foundation Bursars’ Tournament, held in St Andrews on 7-8 April. Borrowman, of Stirling University, shot rounds of 71, 70 and 70 for a total of 211, while Murray, of Robert Gordon University in Aberdeen, shot three consecutive scores of 73 to finish on 219.

  

Both men’s and ladies’ competitions finished in ties, the two winners being decided by back nine countback scores that put them ahead of Federico Colombo (70-71-70) and Pamela Pretswell (75-69-75) respectively.

The men’s event could easily have been closer still. James Gill, a New Zealander who studies at St Andrews University, took a four shot lead into Tuesday’s final round over the Old Course, after superb rounds of 68 and 69 on the Eden Course the previous day. Gill struggled on the final day, however, and when his 12-ft birdie putt on the final green stopped two feet short he was destined to finish one shot off the winning score, with a three-over-par final round of 75.

Federico Colombo, an Italian international player and student at the University of Milan, certainly had the most dramatic week of the top contenders: travel problems meant that he didn’t arrive until two o’clock in the morning on the first day of the event, with his clubs still stuck somewhere between Milan and Gatwick. Yet his hired clubs and borrowed shoes nearly did the trick: he got to four under par for his third round before dropping back with a four-putt on the 13th which robbed him of his momentum.

In the end, it was Borrowman who prevailed after a superb 70 in which he scored no worse than a four on any of the first 16 holes, although he thought his chance might have slipped away when he bogeyed the 17th and watched his approach on the last hole fall short into the Valley of Sin. “I knew the scores and knew that I had a putt to win on the last,” he said, referring to the six-foot par putt he was left after his chip, “but when it missed, I had no idea who would win.”

The ladies’ competition also ended in a tie, with Laura Murray’s 73 bringing her level with first-day leader Pamela Pretswell. Murray began her round with seven consecutive fours to be three under par, and kept things steady throughout, though she endured a nervous moment on the final hole when her drive finished within inches of the out-of-bounds fence on the right-hand side. Taking advantage of her narrow escape, she fired a six-iron to the heart of the green and set up a finishing birdie, leaving Pretswell to rue her double-bogey six on the short par-4 10th.

There was consolation for Pretswell, however, when she received news that as the second place finisher she would take her place alongside Murray representing The R&A Bursars in a team competition to be played in Argentina later this year. Murray also secures a sponsor’s invitation to play in the Ladies English Open, to be held at The Oxfordshire in July.

Alongside his trophy, Scott Borrowman also won himself a place in the European team for the Palmer Cup, the annual US vs Europe students event, which this year will be played at Glasgow Golf Club’s Gailes Course in Ayrshire.

- This year’s R&A Foundation Bursars’ Tournament brought together sixty R&A-supported university students from across Europe.
- The R&A Training Panel contributes over £300,000 per year to university golf, supporting more than 90 individual student golfers and helping fund golf programmes at 12 universities throughout Britain and Ireland.

Source: R&A