Andy DevaneyThe Nexo Championship Celebrity Pro-Am will get an unusually competitive dose of Murray family sporting DNA on Wednesday 19 August, when Sir Andy Murray joins Judy and Jamie Murray at Trump International Golf Links in Aberdeenshire.
For a former world number one now playing to a 0.3 handicap, this is not ceremonial golf with a famous name attached. Murray has apparently found another sport capable of making perfectionists deeply unhappy.
From Centre Court to a 0.3 handicap
Murray retired from tennis in 2024 after a 19-year career that brought three Grand Slam singles titles, two Olympic gold medals and 41 weeks at the top of the men’s rankings. His place in British sporting history was secure long before he started worrying about bunker lies and six-footers for par.
Golf, though, has become more than a polite retirement hobby. Murray has already appeared in the BMW PGA Championship Pro-Am and the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship Pro-Am, and a 0.3 handicap suggests the competitive instinct survived the farewell to professional tennis rather comfortably.
Plenty of elite sportspeople take up golf. Far fewer get close enough to scratch for every dropped shot to feel like a personal insult.
Judy and Jamie join the Murray golf experiment
The attraction in Aberdeenshire is not simply Andy’s presence. Judy Murray, the coach who played such a central role in the family’s tennis story, and Jamie Murray, a seven-time Grand Slam doubles champion, will also tee it up.
The trio are scheduled to play the front nine with Patrick Reed before switching to Eddie Pepperell for the closing holes. Reed currently leads the Race to Dubai, while Pepperell is a two-time DP World Tour winner. That gives the celebrity format a useful bit of edge: there will be proper tour golf alongside the familiar faces.
For Andy Murray in particular, Reed provides an interesting reference point. A 0.3 handicap is formidable in a club match. Beside the man leading the DP World Tour season, the scale changes rather quickly.
Patrick Reed brings tournament form to the Pro-Am
Reed arrives in Scotland having won twice on the 2026 Race to Dubai, and the Nexo Championship itself begins the following day, running from 20–23 August. Defending champion Grant Forrest is also in the main field as Trump International Golf Links hosts the tournament for a second time.
That timing gives Wednesday rather more purpose than the average celebrity knockabout. The Nexo Championship Celebrity Pro-Am serves as the public curtain-raiser to four days of DP World Tour competition.
For spectators, it also offers a different view of elite sport. A tennis champion who spent years controlling rallies, angles and pressure now has to negotiate a game in which a perfectly sensible swing can occasionally produce a ball heading towards somewhere requiring binoculars.
Scottish sporting names fill the Wednesday field
The Murray family will be part of a wider cast drawn from Scottish sport. Gordon Strachan, Scott Brown, Charlie Mulgrew, Allan McGregor, James McArthur, Steven Fletcher and John Hewitt are among the football names confirmed, with the wider line-up also drawing personalities from rugby and curling.
It is a sensible formula for a new pro-am. The golf matters enough to keep enthusiasts interested, while the sporting crossovers give Wednesday an identity beyond another practice-day stroll. Tickets remain on sale for the event in Aberdeenshire.
Murray’s second sporting obsession is getting serious
There is no need to pretend a celebrity pro-am carries the consequence of Wimbledon, an Olympic final or a Davis Cup decider. It plainly does not. That is part of the appeal.
Murray has already proved almost everything worth proving in his first sport. Golf offers no immunity for past achievement, no bonus strokes for ending Britain’s 77-year wait for a men’s Wimbledon singles champion, and absolutely no sympathy for a pushed iron.
On Wednesday, the Nexo Championship Celebrity Pro-Am gets a sporting family with very little experience of doing anything casually.
Golf will be delighted to test that theory.
