Ramsay ends long drought for Scotland

John Kelly hit the ball far all week, but his length was no match for the accuracy of a British Walker Cup player.

By Jerry Zgoda, Star Tribune

Last update: August 27, 2006 - 9:46 PM

Richie Ramsay thanked his tolerant golf instructor, his mates already hoisting a few celebratory pints at the pub back home and a benevolent stranger Sunday afternoon at Hazeltine National Golf Club after he became the first Scotsman since 1898 to win the U.S. Amateur championship.

He thought of everyone at the Royal Aberdeen Golf Club -- the sixth-oldest golf club in the world -- and anyone else in his 23 years who helped lead him to this moment. Included was a fellow for whom Ramsay caddied three years ago at his wind-battered home course hard by the North Sea.

Ramsay looped for a guy named Dick Gilbert from New York City. Gilbert had a Scotty Cameron Futura putter -- a space-age instrument that the caddie admired -- in his bag that day.

"He lives on Fifth Avenue somewhere," Ramsay said, "but I know it's a big street."

The man asked Ramsay after the round if he liked the putter and promised to send him one. Two weeks later, a package arrived bearing a putter with a retail price of $285. It was the same one Ramsay used Sunday to defeat St. Louis' John Kelly 4-and-2 with an exhibition in precision in the 36-hole title match.

Kelly, who finished 39th at the Big 12 championship last spring, played fast and hit the ball far all week at his first U.S. Amateur. On Sunday, his distance was no match for a smallish, shorter-hitting Scot who rarely missed a fairway or green and was unfailing with that Scotty Cameron putter.

"Drove me crazy," Kelly said about his opponent's relentless play.

Ramsay, a Walker Cup player whose appearance there last year for Great Britain and Ireland made him exempt for this championship, began his long week at Hazeltine National with a 75 Monday at Hazeltine National that included a bogey-bogey-double bogey finish on the first day of qualifying stroke play.

He finished it with his sixth consecutive match-play victory, a streak that was a demonstration in perseverance. Ramsay's neophyte caddie lost him a hole late in Friday afternoon's playoff quarterfinal victory, and then Ramsay turned around and committed a rules violation that made Saturday's semifinal more tense than was necessary.

"Just toughened me up a bit," Ramsay said about his ordeals Friday on Hazeltine's signature 16th hole and Saturday on its 17th.

On Sunday he was unflappable, building a 2-up lead by the lunch break and then repelling Kelly's comeback attempt early in the afternoon round. His opponent's 60-foot birdie putt at the downhill 10th hole didn't faze him. Neither did the history of the previous two days.

The match ended appropriately on the 16th green that juts out into Hazeltine Lake -- the most scenic spot on the course -- when Kelly conceded his opponent a 10-foot putt after Kelly had labored on the hole for one final time during tournament week.

"I wasn't going to have him grind over that," said Kelly, who would have needed his opponent to three-putt from that distance to extend the match. "He outplayed me today. I thought it was a nice gesture to end it there. I mean, I played horrible on that hole all week. So it's kind of fitting that I lost there."

No Scot had won the U.S. Amateur since Findlay Douglas did 108 years ago, three years after the first championship was played a day before the first U.S. Open. A Scot hadn't won any USGA event since Tommy Armour won the U.S. Open in 1927.

Until last week, Ramsay said he wasn't even aware that the 2007 British Open was coming to Carnoustie just down the motorway from Aberdeen. Now, he will play in it next summer, a month after he tees it up with Tiger Woods and Geoff Ogilvy at the U.S. Open at Oakmont, three months after he is expected to play with Phil Mickelson in the first two rounds of the Masters at Augusta National Golf Club,

The U.S. Open entry and a traditional Masters invitation goes to the final two players in a 312-player field. Entrance into the British Open is reserved solely for the winner, who also received a gold medal and the Havemeyer Trophy on Sunday.

"The Open means the world to me," said Ramsay, who studies marketing at Scotland's Stirling University.

Carnoustie is a links course, as is Ramsay's own Royal Aberdeen, where he still caddies occasionally.

"Everybody's got to make a living," he said. "I've got to pay for a night's out somehow. I think I get about 25 [English pounds per loop], but I may negotiate a bit higher now."

Jerry Zgoda • jzgoda@startribune.com