Alfred Dunhill Links Championship
-20 A Meronk (Pol); -18 C Jarvis (SA), N Norgaard (Den); -17 M Stewart (Sco), T Fleetwood (Eng); -16 R MacIntyre (Sco), B Koepka (US)
Selected others: -13 C Syme (Sco); -12 S Bairstow (Eng), C Hill (Sco); -12 M Fitzpatrick (Eng), M Jordan (Eng); -11 D Law (Sco), R Mansell (Eng); -9 P Harrington (Ire), A Fitzpatrick (Eng), S Jamieson (Sco), C Adam (Sco), E Walker (Sco)
On Wednesday, Michael Stewart earned £2,500 for finishing runner-up in the Tartan Pro Tour event at Duddingston Golf Club near Edinburgh.
Four days later, the 36-year-old picked up nearly 100 times that by finishing joint fourth behind winner Adrian Meronk at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship – “without doubt” the best week of his career and a potentially career-changing one.
Stewart, who has jumped from 979th in the world rankings to 483 as a result, had thought he might have to return to Tartan Tour season finale at Gleneagles to protect his second place, which comes with it promotion to the second-tier Challenge Tour.
But finishing in the top 10 at St Andrews – two shots behind Poland’s Meronk, one behind Denmark’s Niklas Norgaard and South Africa’s Casey Jarvis, and tied with England’s Tommy Fleetwood – means he qualifies for this week’s big-money Spanish Open.
And, thanks to advice from Sunday playing partner MJ Daffue, he is instead already flying to Madrid as that should give him an even better chance of making the Challenge Tour.
“After speaking to the tour and having things laid out for me, there is a thing I never knew existed called the [DP World Tour] Non-Member Points List,” Stewart told The Scotsman.
