Twin peaks the target for Lawrie in Swiss Alps

Paul Lawrie has moved on from Scotland to Switzerland to try to pull off the same double Thomas Bjorn achieved last year.

A month before his return to the Ryder Cup after a 13-year gap, Lawrie won the Johnnie Walker Championship at Gleneagles on Sunday. Now he is out to take Bjorn’s Omega European Masters title as well — and the pair will go head to head in the opening two rounds at Crans-sur-Sierre. Peter Hanson is the only other member of Jose Maria Olazabal’s side in a field which also includes 57-year-old Greg Norman and Chinese amateur Andy Zhang, the 14-year-old who in June became the youngest-ever player to qualify for the US Open.

There is also Hanson’s fellow Swede Kristoffer Broberg, whose recent form has been nothing short of sensational.

On Saturday the 26-year-old became the fastest player in Challenge Tour history to earn three victories and instant promotion to the European Tour.

After wins in Finland and Norway earlier in the month Broberg won the Rolex Trophy in Geneva with a closing 40-foot birdie putt.

He had played just five Challenge Tour events and finished third and ninth in the other two.

He is also 75 under par for this month alone.

“It’s so amazing, I’m just so happy,” Broberg told the Tour website. “I can’t wait to play on the European Tour — I’m playing so well and my confidence is so high at the moment that I feel like I can compete out there.

“At the moment I want to keep playing as much as I can because I’m playing the best golf of my life.”

Ryder Cup captain Jose Maria Olazabal and his four assistants; Darren Clarke, Bjorn, Paul McGinley and Miguel Angel Jimenez, are all playing and former world No 3 Paul Casey will try again to turn his game around. Casey, who dislocated his shoulder snowboarding last Christmas, is now out of the sport’s top 100, although he did make only his second halfway cut of the season at the Wyndham Championship in North Carolina a fortnight ago.

Colin Montgomerie, meanwhile, is hoping his sixth place at Gleneagles on Sunday is the start of a comeback for him too.

The 49-year-old Scot returns to the event he won 16 years ago.