West Lothian’s Reid gets it right on 40th birthday

West Lothian Golf Club’s Alan Reid celebrated his 40th birthday in style by sealing a place in the Golfbreaks.com PGA Fourball Championship Final.

Reid, right, formed an Anglo-Scottish alliance with North London Golf Academy’s Darren Bragg, left, to top the leaderboard at the Scottish qualifying event held at Musselburgh Golf Club.

The duo carded a nine-under-par round of 62 to beat David Broadfoot, of Dumfries and Galloway’s Kirkcudbright Golf Club, and Richard Clark (Direct Golf UK).

They will join two other qualifiers at the £33,250 BMW-supported grand final at St Mellion in Cornwall on August 20-22.

“It was a good day, particularly as I was celebrating my 40th birthday,” said Reid.

“I’ve known Darren for about 15 years from our days on the Europro Tour.

“He could’ve stayed down south near his North London academy and played his local qualifying event.

“But we get on well and tend to think the same, so he flew up here to play at Musselburgh.

“After that he was back to the airport at Edinburgh to fly back home.”

And Reid admitted he was glad to have Bragg on board.

“Darren was exceptional,” he added.

“Out of the nine birdies we had, he got eight of them while I steadied the ship.

“So he played really well.”      

The pair will now be looking to improve on their performance in last year’s final when they finished 16th.

And Reid believes the long journey to the final in the South West of England will be worth it from his Linlithgow based club.

But Bragg is halfway there after moving his base to Frome, near Bath, in Somerset.

“As soon as we knew the final was at St Mellion we started reminiscing about the B&H event that was held there.

“We’d like to do better than we did last year, that was our first final.

“I’ll be flying down for the event.

“I’m used to travelling so the miles won’t bother me.”