MCLEAN TURNS PRO.

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 59, 11 March 1937, Page 27

MCLEAN TURNS PRO.

LOSS TO AMATEUR RANKS

Jack McLean's decision to. become professional came as a shock to Scottish golfers^ says "Golfing." His great ambition, like that of every amateur golfer; was to win the Amateur Championship. For three years he was among the favourites, but not once had. he the good fortune either to play his best golf when it was most needed or to find an opponent in charitable mood when he. was having the bad round which'every "golfer seems to have.during his Amateur Championship progress.; So it was felt that he would make one' more attempt this year at Sandwich, on a . course where he finished first amateur in the 1934 Open Championship. But now he is lost to amateur golf, and Scotland is the poorer for his defection. He has been in the front rank of Scottish and British ■ amateurs' for five years, and has' won more honours in that brief period than any other- golfer in the country. It is true that during the past two seasons he' was overshadowed by Hector Thomson, but by reaching the final of the American Amateur Championship last September he regained his pristine glory and, more important, his self-confidence, which had been somewhat shaken by repeated failures in the Amateur Championship. The tragedy of his change of status is that he is lost not only to amateur golf but also to professional golf. By accepting a position as full-blown professional to the Buchanan Castle Golf Club he is debarred from competing in*" professional tournaments under the aegis of the P.G.A. for a period of five years. He can play in the Open Championship, and in one or two other events, but in the. main he has entered a selfchosen backwater.

. Barring the British Open, apparently New Zealanders are not likely to hear much of McLean, for awhile.