When Paul Gowens walks into the team room for the 2026 Carnegie Cup, he’ll do so as both leader and competitor. The two-time Major champion and four-time Order of Merit winner has never lost a Carnegie Cup point — a perfect six out of six across his two appearances. But this year, his responsibilities go beyond his own ball-striking and putting stroke.

As captain, Gowens must select eight players to join the four automatic picks — himself, his son Scott, the ever-consistent David McColgan, and the gritty Matchplay champion Denis Duncan. On those decisions will rest not only the balance of his team, but perhaps the destiny of the Cup itself.

The question is: what matters more — current Tour rankings, Cup pedigree, or career-long winning pedigree?

The RyDov Cup has never been just another line on the EuroDov calendar. Since its chaotic birth in 2013, it has grown into a proving ground, a crucible where reputations are built, partnerships forged, and legacies secured. Every putt matters, every pairing becomes a story, and every player leaves behind a statistical footprint.

The 2025 RyDov Cup will long be remembered for its drama, its subplots, and ultimately for Team Gowens’ dominant afternoon surge to secure the trophy. But for Stuart Allan, captain of Team Allan, it will also be remembered as a personal chapter of pride, frustration, and finality. In his own words, Allan has offered a candid reflection on what it meant to lead — and lose — on one of the EuroDov Tour’s most storied stages.

There are few tournaments in golf — even on the EuroDov Tour — that carry the mystique, pressure, and drama of the RyDov Cup. Since its birth in 2013, the event has grown from a dozen players experimenting with matchplay into the Tour’s traditional showpiece, the season’s climactic exclamation point.

For Paul Gowens, the RyDov Cup has always been personal. As both a player and a leader, his name has been etched into the history of the competition, but 2025 elevated him again. By guiding his side to a commanding 15–9 win over Stuart Allan’s men at Kinross, Gowens cemented his place among the great captains of RyDov folklore.

There are dates and places in golf that acquire an almost mythical quality. For the EuroDov Tour, the RyDov Cup has become one of those hallowed markers of the season, a closing chapter that is as much about legacy as it is about scorecards. The 2025 edition promised to add another layer to its folklore.

The EuroDov Tour has always been a proving ground — a stage where reputations are forged, rivalries burn, and silverware has a way of separating the bold from the brilliant. In 2025, no one embodied that journey more completely than Paul Gowens, the newly crowned Player of the Year.

On September 7, 2013, twelve golfers stepped onto the Montgomery Course at Kinross with little idea of what they were starting. The inaugural RyDov Cup was meant as a one-off challenge, captained by father and son William and David McColgan. Instead, it became the foundation of a competition that would grow into the EuroDov Tour’s season-closing jewel, a ritual as ingrained as the autumn mist that settles over Kinross each September.

The RyDov Cup has always thrived on drama. From Christopher Bell’s nerveless 18-footer in 2013 to Graeme Rose and Stephen Hedges storming back from the dead in 2023, the competition’s legacy is built on collapses, comebacks, and captaincy gambles. But ten editions in, as the Cup matures into a cornerstone of the EuroDov Tour, it’s time to peel back the layers of myth and look at what the numbers really tell us.

The EuroDov Tour has announced a fundamental restructuring of its competitive framework, with Commissioner David McColgan confirming that Q-School will be removed from the 2026 calendar and the Order of Merit will be opened to all players. The decision, described as both pragmatic and forward-looking, is set to reshape the Tour’s entry pathways and end-of-season championship qualification.

There are years on the EuroDov Tour when one player dominates so clearly that the end-of-season honours feel inevitable. But 2025 has been a season of shifting narratives, unlikely breakthroughs and high-drama finishes — the sort of year where the Player of the Year award becomes less a coronation and more a debate.

The 2025 EuroDov Tour season was one for the ages. It began with familiar storylines: David McColgan favoured, Richard Mair the steady threat, and Paul Gowens seeking his breakthrough. It ended in chaos at Craigielaw, with record-breaking scores, McColgan collapsing to last, and a debutant lifting the Tour Championship trophy.

The James Braid Quaich changed hands, careers were reborn, and reputations were shattered. Here’s how each player fared — graded on performance versus expectation.

The 2025 EuroDov Tour season ended not with a whisper but with a thunderclap. Craigielaw Golf Club, playing benign under blue skies, was the stage for the lowest-scoring Tour Championship in history: Scott Gowens smashed the tournament record with a breathtaking -14, Paul Gowens sealed the James Braid Quaich with a season of steady brilliance, and David McColgan — the Tour’s metronomic benchmark — collapsed to his lowest ever finish.

But what did the players themselves make of a season that broke records and perhaps reshaped the very future of the Tour? Across the field, the voices were varied, but a few themes emerged: resilience, respect, and the sense that EuroDov golf has entered uncharted waters.

Paul Gowens is the EuroDov Tour – Champion Golfer of the Year - built on a season of relentless consistency: 2nd at St Andrews, 6th at Kinghorn, 1st at Pitfirrane, 8th at Canmore, 2nd at Lochgelly, 2nd at Craigielaw.

On the sun-kissed links of East Lothian, the Quaich finally found his hands. And the Tour, as it so often does, found a story worthy of its history.

The James Braid Quaich has always been more than just a trophy. It is the Tour’s ultimate marker of consistency, resilience, and brilliance across a season, the silver bowl every EuroDov golfer imagines lifting on a late-summer afternoon when the winds whip off the Firth of Forth.

What had been framed as McColgan’s march to another title instead became a story of transformation: a record-breaking Tour Championship, a new name on the Quaich, and perhaps the passing of an era.

Every so often, the EuroDov Tour produces a result that shifts the landscape. A new name, a new standard, a new story to etch into its folklore. At the 2025 Tour Championships, that name was Scott Gowens.

The EuroDov Tour’s Order of Merit season reached its crescendo at Craigielaw Golf Club in East Lothian, a venue bathed in rare perfection. Links golf is usually defined by the lash of the wind, the bounce of the ball on sun-scorched fairways, or the brooding skies that roll in from the Firth of Forth.

The James Braid Quaich has a habit of producing late twists. In 2023, Richard Mair fell short by a whisker. In 2024, Daniel Peck’s charge fizzled in the final round. In 2025, the stage is set for another drama.

Craigielaw is no ordinary course. Perched on the East Lothian coast, it demands discipline, nerve, and imagination. The fairways run fast and true, the greens are subtly contoured, and the wind is a constant companion.

It is, in many ways, the perfect decider. A place where leaders can be punished for caution, where chasers can seize momentum, and where no advantage is ever entirely safe.

Every sporting calendar has its culmination. For football, it is the Champions League Final. For tennis, Wimbledon. For the EuroDov Tour — the fast-growing Scottish amateur circuit that has built a fierce reputation for drama and rivalry — it is the Tour Championship.

On Friday 22nd August, Craigielaw Golf Club will once again play host to the defining moment of the season. Thirteen players, whittled down through months of competition across St Andrews, Kinghorn, Pitfirrane, Burntisland, Canmore, and Lochgelly, will face off in East Lothian’s salt-whipped winds for the Tour’s ultimate prize.

The standings tell the story of a season where margins mattered more than ever. McColgan may lead, but the gap is narrow enough for Gowens, Peck, or Allan to dream. Alan and Denis Duncan, buoyed by their summer form, could yet upset the hierarchy. And Mair remains the perennial question mark: will brilliance finally convert into silverware?

As the regular season fades into history, all roads now lead to Craigielaw. The Tour Championship awaits, promising one final examination, one last chance for glory. If the season so far has taught us anything, it’s that nothing can be taken for granted.

The 2025 Order of Merit is alive with possibility, and the biggest stage of all is yet to come.

From Gowens’ calm persistence to Allan’s fireworks, from Greenshields’ gallows humour to Duncan’s grit, and McNeill’s sharp wit, the FLO was as much about voices as numbers.

Yes, it was McColgan’s trophy, claimed in dramatic fashion on countback. But the tapestry of the day was woven by all. The FLO remains special not just because it crowns champions, but because it reveals character.

At Lochgelly, McColgan once again showed why he is the Tour’s standard-bearer. Composed under pressure, ruthless on the greens, and grounded in his roots, he turned a tight duel into another personal triumph. With the biggest stage of the year still to come, he is not just the FLO champion — he is the man to beat.

For the Tour, it was the perfect closing act to a regular season of twists and turns. The Order of Merit now heads into the Tour Champs with storylines everywhere: McColgan’s supremacy, Mair’s resilience, Gowens’ resurgence, Brannan’s form, and Allan’s rise.

The FLO once again reminded us why it matters. Why it will continue to matter. And why, on a sun-soaked Sunday in Fife, history once again found its author.

And this time, the name etched into stone was David McColgan — Forrester-Lochgelly Open Champion, 2025.

When Denis Duncan stood on the 18th tee of the Matchplay final, 1Up against his brother Alan, confusion briefly clouded the moment. Alan had just shaken his hand — but was it over? Had he conceded? Or was he simply offering the kind of sporting gesture only a sibling and a rival could give? “I didn’t know if I’d won or if we were still playing,” Denis said, laughing afterwards. “Only at the end did I realise — it was over. I’d won.”

It began with twenty-one hopefuls and ended with a brother bested. In a tournament defined by tight margins, dramatic comebacks, and sudden-death shootouts, it was Denis Duncan who stood tallest when the dust settled — a new name etched onto the EuroDov Tour’s most gladiatorial trophy.

This year’s Matchplay Championship, one of the purest tests of character and skill in the EuroDov calendar, didn’t just deliver a worthy champion. It gave us a saga.

As summer fades into the amber hues of late August, the EuroDov Tour’s regular season prepares to close its chapter with one last test: the 2025 Forrester-Lochgelly Open (FLO). Held on Sunday 17th August, the narrow fairways and glassy greens of Lochgelly Golf Course have long had a say in shaping seasons — and this event will not only determine the Standings in the Order of Merit as the players head to the Tour Champs but could also etch another name into the annals of tour legend.

It was billed as one of the tightest fields of the season. A stacked leaderboard, a course known for mid-round carnage, and a count-back finale. Yet when the dust settled at the 2025 King’s Cup, it was Alan Duncan — the older of the Duncan brothers — who stood alone at the summit, trophy in hand and grin wide enough to stretch from the 1st tee to the 18th green.

The 2025 King’s Cup will be remembered not just for its thrilling count-back finish, but for the tapestry of player narratives that wove through the field at Canmore Golf Club. From a brotherly duel under pressure to a late-season surge in the Order of Merit race, the post-round reflections reveal a field full of admiration, frustration, and determination. As the sun set over one of Scotland’s quirkiest and most challenging tracks, the voices of the players told a compelling story of what unfolded.

As the players arrived to warm and balmy conditions at Canmore Golf Club, the EuroDov Tour delivered another unforgettable chapter in its storied 2025 season. The King’s Cup, the fifth event of the 2025 Order of Merit, brought a field of seasoned campaigners and rising challengers to the deceptively demanding Canmore Golf Club — and what unfolded was a classic of calculation, composure, and brotherly competitio

With the sun set to break over Kinross Golf Courses on Saturday 4 September, the stage is set for the 11th playing of the RyDov Cup. This one day spectacle, battling across morning singles and afternoon Greensomes, has become EuroDov Tour lore — a crucible of personal rivalry, tactical nuance, and sheer nerves. Yesterday’s fog shrouded memories still linger from 2024, when Team Gowens clinched victory in an electrifying finale that hinted at a new era on tour.

Twenty-four players, twelve matches, two teams - the 2025 RyDov Cup promises another thrilling chapter in this fiercely competitive and emotionally charged inter-team clash. With every player bringing with them a decade of stories — this isn't just golf. It’s RyDov.

Below, we break down every morning singles and afternoon Greensomes match, one-by-one, with form guides, stat comparisons, narratives, and predictions.