Scotland was supposed to be the world's 'leading golfing nation' by 2020. What happened?

There’s nothing quite like the sound and the sight of a purely struck golf shot. You know, the whoosh, the fizz, the jaw-dropping speed and trajectory that’s akin to a fighter jet hurtling away from an aircraft carrier?

No, I wouldn’t know anything about that golfing sensation either. Let’s face it, you’ve probably got more chance of glimpsing the critically endangered blue-eyed ground dove as you have of seeing me hit a corker out of the screws.

Apparently, authorities on all things avian once believed that the aforementioned dove had been extinct for almost 70 years until evidence of its existence was unearthed again in 2015.

I’m hoping my golf game, which seems to have vanished off the face of the earth, enjoys a similarly startling reappearance.

Forget a lesson from a PGA pro, though. I probably need conservation assistance from the good folk at Bird Life International.

But I’m waffling on here. As usual. I’d started this column by mentioning sweetly clattered strikes and over the past couple of weeks I’ve witnessed plenty of those during the Scottish Open, The Open and the Women’s Scottish Open.

The Scottish scribblers didn’t exactly have a cast of thousands to deal with on the home front, mind you. We had, for instance, just two Scots competing in The Open, namely Robert MacIntyre and Jack McDonald, and a similar number, in Gemma Dryburgh and Hannah Darling, at the Women’s Scottish Open.

Slim pickings indeed. Some of you may be asking, "so, where’s the next wave coming from?" Your guess may be as good as mine.

Yes, there are some good amateur talents in the likes of Connor Graham, Niall Shiels-Donegan and the Girls’ Under-16 champion Carly McDonald, but it’s hardly been a vintage season.

In America, the USGA has officially launched the U.S. National Development Program , designed to create a unified pathway that nurtures top Americans through the junior and amateur ranks to the pinnacle of the sport, back in 2023.

Beginning that year, the program funded 50 juniors and the number has grown each year so that by 2027, the program will fund 1,000 juniors across the country and impact thousands more. The Junior National Team launched in 2024 with the Amateur National Team forming the following year and the Young Professional Team in 2026.

But in Scotland, the results of this summer’s various European Amateur Team Championships were meager. The men, relegated out of the top flight the other year, finished fifth out of nine teams in division two. The women were 18th out of 22, the boys came in 14th out of 16 and the girls were 12th out of 19.

These results got me thinking about an aspirational strategy that was unveiled by the then Scottish Golf Union a number of years ago.

In a meaty blueprint, the high heads of the amateur governing body declared that, “by 2020 Scotland will be the world leading golfing nation” while having “the most comprehensive player pathway to develop golfers from entry level to elite levels in the world.”

While admirable in its ambitions, the aims and objectives now seem laughable in hindsight. One presumes said document is now gathering dust.

Here in 2026, Scottish Golf, as it’s now known, is set to go down a different route to player development with the launch this October of a combination of regional performance development programmes and national squads.

Will this way reap rewards? Who knows, but one thing we can say with certainty is that the game in this country remains steadfastly disjointed.

During the men’s Scottish Open, Stephen Gallacher, whose foundation does a wonderful job in nurturing junior golf, announced a new partnership with First Tee Scotland which will aim to give more boys and girls throughout the country a golfing chance.

With Paul Lawrie’s long-standing foundation doing excellent stuff in the northeast, numerous PGA pros throughout the land chipping in too, the Sean Connery Foundation giving financial support to players and Scottish Golf involved in all manner of programs, we’re certainly not short of initiatives, industry and good intentions.

In an ideal world, of course, you’d like all this expertise, experience, enthusiasm and endeavour to unite for the wider cause and drive forward as one instead of somebody doing this, somebody else doing that and another body doing a bit of the other.

That ain’t going to happen, though. This is golf we’re talking about, after all.

“I think one of the things that I probably hadn't appreciated as much as I maybe should have done before I started was quite how fragmented this sport is,” said Mark Darbon, the new chief executive of the R&A.

“I used to think that the sport I was working in previously, in rugby, was fragmented at different levels, but golf takes that to another level.”

Darbon, of course, is taking a global view of golf’s various layers but his words ring true here in the game’s cradle.

The great Peter Alliss once described golf as an "enigma wrapped in a mystery impaled on a conundrum.”

That could just about sum up a player development strategy in Scotland, too.

Nick Rodger is the golf columnist for the Scotland Herald, part of USA Today Co. Beth Ann Nichols contributed reporting to this article.

This article originally appeared on Golfweek: Scotland was supposed to be the world's 'leading golfing nation' by 2020. What happened?

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