The 152nd Open Golf Championship from Troon

Martin Dempster previews The Open from Troon.

Transcript

00:00Hello, it's Martin Dempster, the Scotsman Golf Correspondent here. I come to you from

00:07Royal Troon on the eve of the 152nd Open Championship. And as you can probably hear, the final touches

00:19are being made to the Ayrshire course ahead of Thursday's opening round. The action gets

00:26underway here at 6.35am. In that first group are two former Troon winners, Justin Leonard

00:36and Todd Hamilton. And what a thrill it's going to be for local man Jack McDonald as

00:43he joins those two players in the first group out in this event. Behind them, the second

00:50group, Nairn amateur Callum Scott. He's out with former Scottish Open champion Alex Norn

00:58and the young Northern Irishman Tom McKibben. So certainly plenty of interest from a Scottish

01:03perspective early on and not long after, maybe an hour or so after, the newly crowned Genesis

01:09Scottish Open champion Bob McIntyre is going to step onto the first tee to a tremendous

01:15ovation in recognition of that win last weekend. And what a group he's in as well. Two of his

01:21Ryder Cup teammates, John Ram and Tommy Fleetwood, are going to be alongside McIntyre and there's

01:27no doubt that group is going to have a huge following on this opening day. Fourth Scot

01:33on the field, Ewan Ferguson. He's out just before noon in the opening round and usually

01:39it's in a two ball. He's playing with Marcel Siem in that two ball and that's because the

01:45field on this occasion is 158 players, not the traditional 156. And on Friday they'll

01:53be the first group out. Great excitement as always heading into the Open. All the preparations

02:00have now been done by the players. They'll be on the range maybe the next hour or so

02:05just finishing things off. Tenth time the Open has been held here at Troon. The last

02:12occasion was in 2014 when we were treated to a memorable duel between Henrik Stenson

02:20and Phil Mickelson over the final 36 holes. The winning total on that occasion was 20

02:27under par, which is pretty astonishing round here. Don't think it's going to be as low

02:32as that again, but we're certainly going to be in for a fascinating four days of golf.

02:37To keep up to date with everything about the 150 second Open, log on to Scotsman.com or

02:43buy the Scotsman.