Shanghai: Silport welcomed auld and new friends alike when 90 members and guests contested the second annual Scotland – The Home of Golf Challenge Day over the club’s East and Center courses.

For more than five years now, Silport and sister-club Tiger Beach Golf Links have boasted perhaps the strongest Scottish ties of any Asian club through its association with Angus County and its most famous club, Carnoustie Links.

Tiger Beach and the 2007 British Open host venue Carnoustie have shared a sister-link agreement since 2002 and officials and trade delegates from Angus have been regular visitors to the mainland in promoting the county’s golf, agricultural, education, tourism, engineering and manufacturing offerings, among others.

Such expertise was evident at the Home of Golf Challenge Day as the prizes included a lucky draw for a return trip for two to Scotland via London on Virgin Atlantic Airways. The journey featured BritRail passes and five nights’ accommodation in Scotland through sponsors ACP Rail International and Visit Scotland.

The second prize was equally adventurous as it offered one week of language tuition in Glasgow. The package, courtesy of the Glasgow School of English, included 15 hours of general English, 10 hours of executive English on a one-to-one basis, accommodation, including breakfast and dinner, sightseeing and a round of golf.

With the drone of a lone piper marking the start of the tournament, the field teed off in a shotgun start under the team Texas Scramble scoring system. The competition, which featured the ladies hitting off from the red tees and the men from the blues, proved fierce. When it was all over, the group of Zhou Lixin, LiTong, Li Xiangyang and Shi Lei emerged the victors with a nett team score of 50.7.

The foursome of Liu Hongxin, Xu Yiping, Sun Shouwen and Shao Cailiang finished runner-up (nett 51.2), while Fan Deqing and his three lady partners, Xu Manzhen,.May Wu and Su Yumei, were a respectable third with a nett 52.6 score.

The strength of the women in the field was evident in the individual honors as Su Yumei also won the nearest-the-pin prize when she put her shot to within three feet of the flag on the East No. 3 hole. Olivia Li crushed her drive 260 yards down the fairway of the Center No. 9 hole for the longest drive crown.

At the afterwards party with a five-person band that included a piper from Scotland entertaining, Melanie Angus and Lee Po-ling of Visit Scotland oversaw the festivities and awarded the various prizes.

Ms Angus, the trade promotion manager for the national tourism body, expressed Scotland’s thanks for the support Silport and Tiger Beach had provided for the country and presented club general manager Jack Huang with a trophy in gratitude. She called Silport a “wonderful place” where the atmosphere on this special day really was Scottish and made all the visitors feel at home.

It was the second year that Visit Scotland and Scottish Development International had hosted the event at Silport.