Marco and Franz make it a pro-am to savour

CADDIE'S ROLE:THE PRO-AM is the dreaded weekly necessary evil of the tour when the highest-ranked players get to prepare for the tournament alongside the invited amateurs the day before the event starts. It is a selling point for the tour and so ingrained in the system that we all have taken to accept it unquestionably.

Last week’s Dunhill Links Championship should have been in its inaugural years maybe more aptly named the Dunhill Links Challenge in many players’ minds. Having to endure six-hour rounds with a fellow professional and two amateurs got most of them pondering half way into their extended rounds why they turned pro in the first instance.

The event used to be three-man teams representing their countries and played exclusively over the Old Course at St Andrews; it was a prestigious and patriotic occasion.

Today’s format was adopted 10 years ago and despite the laborious rounds, like most things in life, people get accustomed to almost everything; the pros have become immune to the amateur’s company for three rounds and some even look forward to the distraction of playing with some celebrities and family members instead of the same professional faces who usually accompany them around the links each week.

The inspiration of playing and staying at the home of golf is softened by the workload that we take on preparing for an event held on three different courses over four days. Despite intimate knowledge of St Andrews, Kingsbarns, and Carnoustie, gleaned over the years by the tour players and their caddies, most are programmed to play a practice round on each of the three courses all situated within a 50-mile radius of each other. So come Thursday the chances are you are not quite as fresh as you should be on the first day of a major event.

And a major event it is too, with $5 million (€3.4m) on offer, the prize money is significant and too lucrative a purse to swerve for amateur-inconvenience reasons.

The distraction for some is, as in Ernie Els’s and Rory McIlroy’s cases, you get to play with your dad. Others got the chance to repay their sponsors by accompanying them for the week. Then there were the celebrities who offered the pros the chance of a bit of role reversal. I even noticed a couple of professionals getting their playing partners’ autographs.

Despite the rare inspiration of the links challenge, my boss, Alexander Noren, and our other partner from the professional ranks, the young Italian Alessandro Tadini, got to partner Marco van Basten and Franz Klammer respectively. Despite both the amateurs being keen golfers it was definitely a case of them being the stars, albeit from a different era.

Alex is not a huge soccer fan but as a young lad he had become a bit of an aficionado of AC Milan’s 5-1 defeat of IFK Gothenburg in the early ’90s. It was a game he knew by heart so getting paired with the legendary Van Basten afforded him the opportunity to go through the four goals Marco scored in the game as well as one that was disallowed.

There were pop stars ahead of us and film stars behind us. There were body guards protecting egos I assumed more than bodies as there seemed little threat from star gazers. I struggled to make out the face of a slight, grey-haired man making his way through a bunch of young lads clamouring for autographs. The Scottish youths had not forgotten the legend of Johan Cruyff.

In the many idle moments of the five-and-a-half-hour first round there were opportunities to interrogate the stars. The 25-time winner of world championship downhill skiing events, the affable Austrian Klammer, was informative but modest when he talked about his golden years on the slopes.

He was skiing in the wrong era he said as his impressive number of wins were dwarfed by the greatest downhill skier ever, the Swede Ingemar Stenmark who clocked up over 80. The Swede was the quiet man of the slopes and as Klammer explained, he said little but was always listening. I used to work for a guy like that and he was brilliant. It’s no coincidence the great champions have this ability to tacitly absorb information.

Playing with Van Basten was also a revelation. The three-time European footballer of the year and once Fifa world player of the year was serene and quietly competitive and a keen observer of the traits and talent of his young professional partner Noren.

The links championship affords all concerned the rare opportunity of mixing with everyone connected to the event from organisers to local caddies who work year round at the each of the three courses. Bob and Jim from Carnoustie have been caddying at the links since 1968. They are now both in their 70s and retired from their day jobs but continue to loop three or four times a week.

The 4.15pm bus back to St Andrews from Kingsbarns last Thursday had professionals, amateurs, scorers and caddies on board. It was a rare opportunity to chat to these people. An animated Italian called Ludovico sat beside me with a bottle of beer in hand looking distinguished in his mauve cashmere sweater and finely cut corduroy trousers. He was invigorated by his first experience of playing the links with his professional partner Philip Price and was thankful of playing in a unique town and championship.