He was golf's homesick pro. Now he's on the brink of a homecoming victory (2024)

ST. ANDREWS, Scotland — Eighty miles up the coast from North Berwick, a caddie named Ian is talking.

And talking.

It is the caddie’s job to break up the silence and monotony of the golf round, and Ian evidently takes this job very seriously. It’s Saturday afternoon at the Home of Golf — the Old Course at St. Andrews — which means the pace is slow, and there’s plenty of silence and monotony for Ian to fill.

But suddenly a topic arises amongst his group that piques his interest, and he falls quiet. It’s a score update from the Genesis Scottish Open, happening down the coast in North Berwick. In a country of just 5.5 million, Ian is one of maybe 5.4 million who are invested in the developments of this weekend at the Renaissance, where Robert MacIntyre, golf country’s homecoming kid, is gunning for what would be one of the stories of the year in professional golf.

“What’s Bobby’s score now?” Ian asks, overhearing MacIntyre’s name spoken between the golfers.

“Thirteen under at the turn,” one of them responds. “Two back of the lead.”

Ian’s face spreads into a toothy smile. He’s at the turn himself, standing on one of the furthest points on the Old Course property, miles away from the town of St. Andrews and the nearest television and the thing he cares most about.

Eventually, he’ll see the highlights from the Saturday charge at MacIntyre’s home open, a third-round 63 to vault straight up the leaderboard into solo-second and the Sunday final pairing for the second straight year. For now, though, all he can do is wait. In some ways, it’s even better this way.

“That’s good,” he says. “That’s real good.”

IT CAN BE DIFFICULT to parse meaning from week to week in pro golf.

There are the big ones — the majors — obviously, those go without saying. And then the Invitationals, where the money is good and the prestige is big. Then the Signature Events, those mean a lot too — if only because of the $20 million purses and limited fields. But things get murkier outside of those dozen or so weeks a year.

What’s big? What’s relevant? What’s important? What’s not? It all depends. New things start to matter. Things like field strength and calendar position and sponsor exemptions and ticket sales and golf course architecture and, yes, hometown favorites.

This week, the best players in the world have flocked upon North Berwick because the Scottish Open is held in Goldilocks territory on the pro golf schedule: close to a major championship, in a desirable area to visit, for a decent payout and in front of a rabid crowd. This is pro golf at its most idyllic: interesting for the sake of being interesting. And when the world is paying attention, the best stories tend to find their way into the light.

Like, for example, young Bobby MacIntyre, the pride of Oban, Scotland — population 8,500. As a pro on the DP World Tour, MacIntyre has been the heart and soul of his golf-obsessed homeland for years now, wearing a thick brogue and his heart on his sleeve. He is, in almost all ways, the ideal Scottish golfing specimen: playing a style that is low-to-the-ground, crafty and weather-resistant; sporting a skin tone so pale it’s usually sunscreen-streaked; and bracing his audiences with humor dryer than an afternoon breeze in the highlands.

Last summer, MacIntyre came within a hair of winning his national open, beating everybody and everything but a Rory McIlroy 2-iron in a five-club wind that the four-time champ would later call one of the best of his career. He lost to McIlroy on the 18th green by one and went home dejected.

The performance at the Scottish would help propel MacIntyre into a new golfing stratosphere, earning a spot on the Ryder Cup team and full-time PGA Tour membership in 2024. He moved to Orlando at the start of the year with a head full of dreams, but that promise soon faded; his form plummeted, and he gave press conferences at multiple tournaments discussing his struggles with loneliness on the road in America.

MacIntyre went on sabbatical back to Scotland for a short while, then brought some of Scotland with him to the U.S., traveling with his father on the bag at the start of the spring. An emotional win at the Canadian Open followed, the biggest of MacIntyre’s career, but even then his heart was focused elsewhere.

“Everybody knows this is the one I want to win,” MacIntyre said in a pre-tournament presser at the Scottish on Tuesday. “If it’s not the major championships, it’s the Scottish Open.”

MacIntyre has tried to avoid allowing himself to dream too loudly about the possibility that lies before him at the Scottish Open. He has spoken in unusually guarded, measured terms to the press all week — employing a strategy not unlike the one used by Xander Schauffele at the PGA Championship in May.

“Tomorrow is just another round of golf,” he said Saturday. “I’ve just got to control me and if I do that well, then I’m going to be in with a chance.”

On Saturday night, at least, he will go to bed with that dream still very much a possibility. MacIntyre will play in Sunday’s final pairing alongside tournament leader Ludvig Aberg, who is two shots ahead and looking every bit of the formidable contender McIlroy was a year ago.

“I said it from the start, I just want to be in with a chance going into Sunday and I’ve given myself that chance,” he said. “Back home in Scotland, it’s one I want, but I can only control me and I’ve controlled myself very well so far.”

A hometown kid winning his homecoming event in the most golf-mad country in the world? That’s the sort of moment that doesn’t come around often in pro golf, even here.

It’s the type of victory that would send a roar through every Scot in North Berwick on Sunday, a hush over every fairway in the countryside.

Even at the Old Course.