NEW LADY PROS (and amateurs) TOUR TEES OFF AT DALMAHOY ON APRIL 18

The new Paul Lawrie Golf Centre Scottish Ladies Open Tour will be launched at Marriott Dalmahoy's East Course on Thursday, April 18.  The 14-event tour, modelled on 18-hole, one-day Alliance lines, will be open to women professionals and female amateurs with a single-figure handicap.  The fledgling tour is also being supported by the RandA.  To save accommodation costs for players coming up from England and Wales or over from Ireland - and possibly the Continent - the events have been divided into neighbouring pairs and will be played back-to-back with no day between.  Ratho Park Golf Club will stage the Edinburgh double-header on Friday, April 19, the day after Dalmahoy.As another gesture to entrants from distant parts, the Dalmahoy event will tee off just before 2pm and Ratho Park at 2pm. The only 36-hole event on the PLGC SLOT will be the Tour Championship over two days at Dalmahoy in October.  The objective of the Tour, which is being co-organised by Nicola Melville, pictured, a PGA teaching professional at St Andrews, and golf writer Colin Farquharson, is to provide a competitive platform for female players, professional and amateurs, to improve their game sufficiently to enable them gain pass marks at the Ladies European Tour Qualifying School.  No Scots survived the recent Q School. Entries - £50 per tournament for both professionals and amateurs - can be made already through the PLGC SLOT website:  http://www.scottishladiestour.co.uk/home  All the entry money goes into the prize fund alongwith a £1,000 donation to each event from the Paul Lawrie Golf Centre. If there are 30 entries, for example, the prize fund will be £2,500 at Dalmahoy and also at Ratho Park, making a £5,000 combined double-header which hopefully will attract competitors from outwith Scotland. Paul Lawrie, Stewart Spence and Martin Gilbert - the Great Triumvirate behind the plan to make the Paul Lawrie Golf Centre, Aberdeen a five-star practice facility with its nine-hole par-3 course, pro's shop,driving range.a short-game practice area about to be built and a restaurant - have no objection to any individual or company contributing to the prize fund at any of the tour venues.