Stephen Gallacher continues to enjoy hot-streak of form as he in eyes place in the World Golf Championships

Feb 17 2011 West Lothian Courier

STEPHEN GALLACHER continued his purple patch of form on the greens with an excellent six-under par result in Dubai which earned him a creditable tenth position.

The Linlithgow golfer’s scorecard made good reading with rounds of 70, 69, 71 and 72 in the Omega sponsored Desert Classic in an excellent, tightly packed field.

That there would be some regret is certain as there were far fewer putts going in on the greens than the West Lothian pro would have wished for.

Having said that, there were a number of players in the field having difficulties on the fast, tricky putting surfaces.

This leaves the big man in 66th spot in the Official World Golf Rankings and awaiting a call for the Accenture World Golf Championship in the USA starting in two weeks’ time.

This is a matchplay event and only the 64 top-ranked players get to tee it up. It is, however, likely that there will be withdrawals, so Stephen may yet be packing his bag for a Stateside trip.

The European Tour is off to India this week but Stephen will be enjoying a well earned rest and getting rid of some of that sand that has collected in his shoes in the last month.

Meanwhile, the Alliance boys were down at Craigielaw last week and it was a good return of 65 from assistant pro at Dunbar Terry Mathieson which lifted the Tom Galloway Trophy for him.

There were just under a hundred players in the field and there was nobody in the prize list with a current West Lothian connection other than Scott Catlin, the Greenburn pro who took joint fifth place with a 70. This finish was good enough to keep him in second spot in the Scratch Order of Merit.

In the handicap stakes there was a tie at the top between Willie Miller of Falkirk Tryst and Harrison's Justin White on the 68 mark. Justin, of course, is the former Deer Park player, now at the Braids.

He is also in some wonderful form with this his third time in the prize list in consecutive Alliance events.