Simon Dyson paired with Adrien Brody in Pro-Am Celebrity golf competition (From Gazette & Herald)

Simon Dyson paired with Adrien Brody in Pro-Am Celebrity golf competition

10:14am Saturday 20th October 2012 in Sport By Tony Kelly, Deputy sports editor

AN invitation to the Mission Hills Pro-Am Celebrity competition has provided a tuning-up task for York golf ace Simon Dyson.

The 34-year-old is among a flurry of star European Tour professionals competing in this weekend’s cash-laden event alongside former major winners Ian Woosnam and Tony Jacklin, and celebrities including former world snooker champion Stephen Hendry and Hollywood actors Andy Garcia and Adrien Brody.

Dyson was paired with Oscar-winner Brody, star of films such as The Pianist, The Jacket, King Kong and Midnight in Paris.

Besides hoping to make an impact at the head of the leaderboard, Dyson will be hoping to arrest a slide in putting form that has seem him drop out of the world’s top 50 over the past three weeks.

Regulation shots from tee to green have been one of Dyson’s strengths in a year hit by recoveries from pelvic and wrist injuries.

One round of the recent Alfred Dunhill Links Championship saw Dyson locate 17 out of 18 greens from the fairway or tee.

But his putting has gone awry and the Malton & Norton GC star is taking the opportunity at the Mission Hills event – at the Hainan Island complex in the China resort of Haikou – to alter his putting stance.

If a move to stand further away when addressing the ball pays off, then it will put Dyson in good heart ahead of next week’s return to the European Tour for the $7 million BMW Masters at the Lake Malaren club in Shanghai in China.

After that there are just four more Euro Tour events – the final World Golf Championship tournament, coincidentally at the Mission Hills course where Dyson is currently playing, the Barclays Singapore Open, the USB Hong Kong Open and the South African Open – before the season’s Race To Dubai climax with the DP World Tour Championship at the Emirates course from November 22 to 25.

PIKE HILLS GC were to the fore in the York Union of Golf Clubs’ match-play championship staged at Easingwold GC.

No fewer than three of the semi-finalists were from Pike Hills – Alistair Smith, Adrian Lount and Russ Chilton. Fulford’s GC Damon Coulson was the other last-four ace.

The final was between Smith and Pike Hills scratch team manager Chilton, but it was Smith who prevailed to capture the title.

That followed on from Pike Hills winning the York Union team event with a total of 298 compiled by Smith, Lount, Craig Smith and Martin Brown at Malton & Norton GC. Brown and Craig Smith also won the foursomes with 71.