Douglas Lowe on Tuesday: Next up for amateur world-beaters Callum Macaulay, Wallace Booth and Gavin Dear is a bid to make it as tournament professionals.

Next up for amateur world-beaters Callum Macaulay, Wallace Booth and Gavin Dear is a bid to make it as tournament professionals.

Before the Scottish trio left for Australia, where they made history by winning the Eisenhower Trophy for the World Amateur Team Championship, they all cleared the first hurdle of the three-stage qualifying process for their European Tour cards. The second stage is in Spain on November 5 to 8.

Happily, if they don't make the grade they will remain as welcome members of the amateur fold, a far cry from the bad old days when you barely had to breathe the word professional before you were summarily ostracised.

Nowadays players are free to talk openly about their hopes and aspirations and provided they don't play for prize-money - Macaulay would have won £1000 for his third-place finish at the Oxfordshire in stage one and Dear £300 for placing seventh - they can try for their tour cards while remaining amateurs, and that is a highly worthwhile fallback.

By winning the Scottish Amateur Championship at Carnoustie this year, Macaulay earned an invitation to play with the European Tour professionals at Loch Lomond in next year's Scottish Open, but only if he remains an amateur.

There is also the carrot of playing for Great Britain & Ireland against the US in the Walker Cup next September at Merion. Playing in and winning that event is regarded, even more than the Eisenhower Trophy, as the ultimate team achievement as a GB&I amateur.

Macaulay and Booth already have GB&I caps from the St Andrews Trophy match they won this year against the Continent of Europe and would be very much in the frame for Walker Cup selection, as would Dear following his showing in Adelaide.

As an amateur he can still aim for the stars, but he is in doubt what he wants. "I'm going to tour school," assured Macaulay after his victory at Carnoustie. "If I don't make it I will have Loch Lomond and the Walker Cup to look forward to, but my only goal right now is to become a professional at the end of the year."

For those good enough, the lure of life as a tournament professional is clearly irresistible. Richie Ramsay showed that two years ago after he won the US amateur championship - a similar level of achievement to the Eisenhower Trophy success.

Ramsay was a certainty for the Walker Cup team at Royal County Down last year but opted out within weeks of the match to pursue a series of invitations on the Challenge Tour, a decision that looked dubious at the time but has proved in hindsight to be a good one.

The Aberdonian did enough with those invitations to secure his playing rights for this year on that secondary circuit and now, with two tournament victories behind him, he has deservedly earned his spurs for a shot at the European Tour next season.

At No.7 in the Challenge Tour rankings he is sure of a card of some sort, but with only this week's Grand Final in Italy to go the one doubt is whether he will stay in the top 10 that would entitle him to a more potentially lucrative schedule than if he finishes in places 11 to 20.

He will be joined in Italy by four others who have already been round the block a few times, Steven O'Hara, Andrew McArthur, David Drysdale and Greig Hutcheon, but two notable absentees are Lloyd Saltman, the former Walker Cup stalwart who won the silver medal for leading amateur in the Open at St Andrews three years ago, and Eric Ramsay (no relation to Richie), who was one shot behind.

He was, and still is, rated as capable of reaching the top, but so far he has not been able to find a secure foothold anywhere on the professional tours, while Eric Ramsay is still in the lower reaches of the Challenge Tour. Both showed at St Andrews that they were eminently capable of competing, at least in a links environment, with the best in the world.

Following their triumph at Royal Adelaide, that links tradition at the very highest level has now extended to Macaulay, Booth and Dear, who should have no doubts about their capabilities when they travel to Spain next month.

Equally they should be aware that the transition from top amateur to tournament professional is a highly fraught one, and in the Scottish context it represents a serious flaw in the structure of the game. It is an area that has been highlighted regularly in this column over the summer and is one that the Scottish Golf Union are taking initial steps to bridge.

The victory in Adelaide is evidence that the amateur game in Scotland is in rude health. Efforts should be stepped up to ensure that the three young players who produced this result can build on it as professionals, whether or not the step is made immediately or delayed for a year or two.