GARY STILLWELL holed five birdies on his way to winning the ARC Trophy at Helensburgh Golf Club on Saturday.

A field of 75 golfers teed up to compete for the silverware, with Gary completing an excellent par round to finish top of the standings on 45 stableford points, one point ahead of both Dougie Mitchell and Kenny Gash.

Meanwhile, with the eyes of the rest of the golfing world very firmly on Royal Liverpool and Brian Harman’s impressive Open Championship victory at Hoylake, Helensburgh golfers marked the final round of the Open in traditional style on Sunday with their own scramble competition.

Nineteen team of four started at the same time in a ‘shotgun’ format – though none got off to a better start than Stuart Buchanan, whose team started their round at the 16th hole, and whose very first shot of the day found the bottom of the cup for a hole in one.

Sadly for Stuart, and his team-mates, neither he nor they were quite able to live up to the standards set by that opening shot and they didn’t feature on the leaderboard when the scores were totted up at the close of play.

Instead it was the team of two couples – Matthew and Shirley Monaghan, and Keith and Susan Cameron – who took the honours, returning a formidable combined score of 20 under par to win with a net score of 49.

Runners up, with a net 51, were Neil Sloan, Jamie Francis, Mark Tynan, and Paul Rattray.