There are not many certainties in life, apart from the usual hum-drum occurrences like death, taxes and a landslip at the Rest & Be Thankful.
In the twisting, turning, topsy-turvy world of golf, the only certainty is the complete and utter uncertainty. Making the transition from the amateur game to the professional ranks tends to be the kind of leap of faith you’d get with an instinctive salmon trying to loup up the rapids.
From a big fish in the amateur pond, you suddenly become a little tiddler in the vast ocean that is the paid game. As a decorated career amateur, Nigel Edwards was never going to make the pro plunge himself but he has watched many do it. “Someone said of me that I’d never play for Wales, let alone GB&I,” reflected Edwards, the Welsh Walker Cup stalwart who skippered GB&I to victory over the USA at Lytham last September.
Over the years, Edwards has played alongside prodigious amateur talents who have gone on to take the golfing world by storm. A Northern Irish lad called Rory something springs to mind. He’s also played alongside those he thought would propel themselves towards stardom but have remained firmly tethered to the launch pad. Lloyd Saltman, who turned pro the same day as his good pal McIlroy in 2007 and was billed as Scotland’s next golfing superstar, remains a case study in what might have been. In this fickle game, you just never know.
“It’s a difficult one and in golf there’s no one size fits all,” said Edwards, who is now the director of coaching with England Golf. “It takes someone very special. You’re dealing with international players, with people, with countries. You go to so many different countries nowadays, you need all sorts of different qualities and there are some players, although they are talented, who fail to deal with that. It’s a hard one, and even the very best don’t always do it. You always think certain players are going to do it and I thought Lloyd was an exceptional player. Unfortunately, it hasn’t happened for him. There are other players who have gone on.”
As the European Tour season resumes this week, one player who has certainly gone on is Englishman Andy Sullivan. Four years ago, he was part of the GB&I Walker Cup winning team at Royal Aberdeen. While we all focussed on the future professional prospects of Scottish duo James Byrne and Michael Stewart, as well as England’s Open silver medal winner Tom Lewis, the largely unheralded Sullivan also took the pro plunge with his team-mates after that Walker Cup. This week he will defend the South African Open title he won during a shimmering 2015 that saw him win three times on the main European circuit.
“If you looked at Andy’s performances from the January of 2011 until that Walker Cup he was one of our most consistent players,” noted Edwards. “Nobody seemed to pick up on that because of Tom Lewis’s success in the Open so Andy was a bit under the radar for a while.”
The last high-profile Scottish talent to turn pro was Bradley Neil last season. Having failed to make the grade at the European Tour qualifying school in November, though, the Blairgowrie teenager will be rummaging around for playing opportunities. He tried to qualify for this week’s South African event but a level-par 72 – eight shots behind the winner in the 18-hole shoot-out – left him well out of the picture. It’s a tough old school and while he was afforded bountiful invitations to some of the game’s biggest events last year as a reward for his Amateur Championship win the previous season, some chastening experiences eventually led to him turning pro when morale had probably been dented.
“Jordan Spieth turned pro when he was playing very well, Rory McIlroy turned pro when he was playing very well,” added Edwards. “I don’t want to put Bradley down because I like the guy, but did he turn pro when he was playing well? We know the answer to that, and he’ll know the answer to that.”
When it come to the amateur-to-pro transition, though, there are no easy answers.
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