Sandy Scott promoted to PGA Tour with Ohio win

Scotland's Sandy Scott won the Nationwide Children's Hospital Championship in Columbus, Ohio on Sunday to earn promotion to the main PGA Tour for the first time. The 28-year-old's one-stroke victory secured his advancement from the development tour.

Scott is in his second season on the development tour and is a native of Inverness. He needed two surgeries after tearing ligaments in his right wrist in 2019 and admitted: "I was in some really low times and didn't know if I'd ever play golf again." The wrist flared up again this season, forcing him to withdraw from this season's BMW Charity Pro-Am and miss two months; he told the Golf Channel: "It was just getting progressively worse," and "Every day, it was harder to warm up and I was getting a bit more sharp pain." He said: "With having a history of having a wrist injury, I've kind of gone through the waves of being unsure about what golf's going to look like for me in the future" and added: "When I did come back from it in college, I had this overwhelming sense of perspective that I'm just happy to be out here competing, fulfilling this dream that I've always had of playing golf professionally. To be able to play well has been a bonus."

Scott began the week ranked 13th on the tour and birdied two of his final three holes to close with a six-under 65 on the Scarlet Course at Ohio State University Golf Club. That finish produced a total of 18-under 266 and broke the 72-hole tournament record. He edged out American John Marshall Butler to claim the win.

The victory lifted Scott to second spot on the development tour's points list and was his first on the Korn Ferry Tour. He becomes the seventh player - and first European - to have qualified for the main tour during the 2027 season.

The win came a week after Scott finished runner-up at the Simmons Bank Open for the Snedeker Foundation in Franklin, Tennessee, and follows a rookie season in which he finished 55th on the development tour last year.

He will next year return to a PGA Tour event for the first time since the 2020 US Open at Winged Foot Golf Club, when he qualified by finishing sixth in the World Amateur Golf Ranking.