The second leg of the European Tour’s ‘Desert Swing" gets underway tomorrow with six Australians aiming to have their name engraved on the Qatar Masters trophy.

Since the tournament’s inception in 1998 Adam Scott is theonly Australian to win the event but Scott Hend, Brett Rumford, Richard Green,Marcus Fraser, Wade Ormsby and amateur Antonio Murdaca will be hoping to change that this week.

The Qatar event has been the scene of mixed fortunes forAustralia’s regular European Tour players over the years.

Richard Green has the most starts in the event with 13 and while he has finished inside the top 10 three times (twice in the top 5), he has also missed the cut on four occasions, including last year.

In what is traditionally a low scoring tournament Green has only broken 70 eight times in more than 40 trips around the course.

Brett Rumford has a similar record in Qatar with one top 10 and four missed cuts from 10 attempts while Marcus Fraser, the only other to have played the tournament more than three times, has two missed cuts and no top 10 finishes from seven starts.

Wade Ormsby, coming off a disappointing missed cut in Abu Dhabi, will be looking to improve his record in Qatar where he his best finish of T30 came in 2004, one of three appearances for the South Australian.

Scott Hend will be the unknown quantity this week as he plays the event for the first time and on the face of it the course would seem to set up well for the long hitting Queenslander.

Hend played well though not spectacularly in his debut as a European Tour member in Abu Dhabi last week and will bring some confidence to his second start for the year, an important ingredient in his success of recent years.

While he’s a rookie on the European Tour Hend is one of the more experienced players in the field and will be excited by the prospect of teeing up against a field that includes five major winners and three of the world’s top 10 players.

The tournament runs from Wednesday to Saturday instead ofthe more traditional Thursday to Sunday with players on course from tomorrow evening Australian time.