Scott Roy has expressed his delight over winning this year’s Moongate Tour Order of Merit with an event to spare.

The professional and Turtle Hill Golf Club director of golf has an unassailable lead heading into the final 18-hole medal event at Port Royal Golf Course on October 13, when he will be gunning for a fourth win in a phenomenal campaign.

“It certainly was a good start to the year,” Roy told The Royal Gazette.

“I know that work and life got in the way in the middle of that, but I am glad I was able to put the time and effort into the beginning of it to get a good start and also to just enjoy and support the Moongate Tour.

“I think it’s done well for golf in Bermuda and I am happy to be a part of it.”

The top 18 players and ties in the Order of Merit after the final medal event will all qualify for the Moongate Tour Championship, which was won last year by professional Camiko Smith.

Professionals Chaka DeSilva and Dwayne Pearman and amateur pair Jevon Roberts (tied for first with Roy) and Oliver Betschart are the remaining winners on this year’s Tour.

Event co-founders Andrew Trott-Francis and DeSilva are both thrilled to see the Tour’s objective of raising the standard of play being met.

“The Moongate Tour has been very successful in improving the standard of play, meaning strictly the scores,” Trott-Francis said.

“We are producing better scores this year than we did last year but overall the tournament scores around the island in the various events have been consistently lower. We are starting to see more players shoot under par, even par or right around par at each course that they are playing.

“Many of the champions throughout this year all play on the Moongate Tour and all of them have expressed that the Moongate Tour has been very beneficial with helping them control their nerves, prepare for events and play at a high standard against a tough field which we consider as Bermuda’s best.

“We believe that we are bringing out the best golfers in Bermuda based on our fields, so ultimately it’s been mission accomplished for our yearly objectives.”

DeSilva was pleased at the chances afforded for top golfers on the island to ply their trade.

“The goal of the event is to provide more competitive opportunities for the best golfers on the island and for those opportunities to help those golfers to get better, to compete under pressure better, to get more acclimated to tournament conditions, and I think that’s exactly what has been happening,” he said.

“You can see from the scores of the Johnnie Walker and from last year’s Local Qualifier [Butterfield Bermuda Championship] that the more competitive opportunities the best golfers on the island have, the better they are going to fare in tournament conditions, and that’s what it’s all about for us.

“We haven’t been able to fill out fields like we anticipated, but the core group of the best golfers in Bermuda are still supporting the Moongate Tour and scores are steadily getting better and better, which is ultimately the goal of the event.

“I think it’s definitely doing what it’s supposed to be doing and we have plans for year three to be much bigger and better that we are working on now.”

This year’s Moongate Tour has been without setbacks as some medal events have been postponed.

“We have had to push back our schedule because of maintenance on the golf course and storms and a couple of events got postponed, so that’s why we are late in the year,” DeSilva added.

“But we are still going to hold all eight events on the Tour Championship, so we are going to have one more event than we did last year.”