Ok there Don, now just act natural....

After his hands thawed out around the fifth hole, Don managed to stay consistently at or under par. We think St. Andrews has the nastiest bunkers this side of a war zone, and Don managed to stay out of ‘em, shooting a -1 under for the day.

There’s much more to come. Mary will post her usual incompetent, erratic, off-the-page and biased analysis direct from the venues and we’ll be adding each day’s images to the slideshow.

Complete (professional) coverage at the European Tour Site

We thought about just going ahead with a cut and paste of our blog entry from last year’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship, ’cause it looks like basically the same club-toting celebrities and sports stars are back in Scotland again this year. The event is too much of a good thing to miss out on and once you’re in, you ain’t budging. Don returns with fellow rock ‘n rollers Huey Lewis and Tico Torres along with vocalist Ronan Keating, with whom he played alongside of two years ago.

Don played with Marc Warren in 2006

The tournament starts next week on Thursday, October 2 and runs through Sunday, October 5. Incidentally, there’ll be a few professional golfers hanging around St. Andrews then, too. They’ll be competing for a measly $5,000,000 total purse in the pro-am, rotating around three different courses over the first three days, with those making the cut playing to win on Sunday. With that kind of loose change available the organizers don’t even bother charging admission for the first three days.

A fans-eye-view of the goings-on can be seen in our own slideshow from last year’s competition. We’ll share information from this year’s event as it unfolds.

The tournament is televised in Europe and in the U.S. More information at the Dunhill Championship official site, including a summary of the celebrity amateurs. The pro entry list can be found at the European Tour site.