In this Royal & Ancient game, the advancing years are certainly no barrier to success. The fusty archives show, for instance, that Methuselah was still knocking off 36-hole wins just shy of his 969th birthday.
At a sprightly 47, Euan McIntosh is very much one of the old guard on the domestic amateur scene. In 2016, he completed his second coming in the unpaid ranks by topping the Scottish order of merit at the end of a consistent campaign that was illuminated by six-top 10 finishes, a win in the South East District Open and a return to the Scotland team for the first time in over 25 years.
Having made the plunge into the professional ranks back in 1990 as a 21-year-old, Glasgow-born McIntosh spent 12 years in that particular arena before quitting the game for a spell and then regaining his amateur status. He’ll be the first to admit that those earlier golfing forays as a young pro were hardly an exercise in Monk-like discipline and dedication but as he clambers the brae on the age front, McIntosh has a renewed sense of focus and direction. The ultimate target is the Senior Tour and with his half century looming, the prospect of another crack at the pro game is helping to drive him on. In this game, you never stop learning and McIntosh is certainly determined to learn from the mistakes of his past as he continues to look to the future.
“I messed it up when I was younger and everything I try to do now is an attempt to make up for messing it up then,” he said with the benefit of experience and hindsight. “My main aim is the Senior Tour when I turn 50 and that’s why I’m putting in all this hard work. One of the things I learned was that you can’t just do it off talent. I just didn’t work hard enough. I’d be going out at nights too often, even during events, and that was ridiculous. Now I know what I need to do to be successful. As soon as I started playing again, I got that feeling inside of, ‘wow, this is fantastic’. I’m more motivated now than I have ever been. There could still be a fairytale ending. I certainly hope so.”
McIntosh was not the first talented Scottish amateur golfer to have struggled with the step up to the professional game and he certainly won’t be the last. The much-debated transition zone, a phrase that brings observers of the game in this country out in rashes and cold sweats, continues to cause much head-scratching and, from his personal knowledge of both sides of the golfing fence, McIntosh has his own notions about the switch. “You knew you probably weren’t doing the right things,” he reflected. “When we were at a Tour School final, let’s say, you would see how the Swedish guys would do it as opposed to how we would do it. They would go away as a group. The Swedish Golf Federation or whoever would take the guys who were coming through from amateur golf who were turning pro and integrate them with the guys who were already pros. I remember playing at the European Boys in Turin sitting next to a Swedish guy and I was drinking a coke and he asked why I was doing that because it contains caffeine. I said it was because I liked it. But he said I shouldn’t be drinking coke because of the caffeine and pointed out they weren’t allowed caffeine. That was when I was 16 and if you are doing what the Swedes were at that age to that extreme you are going to produce successful people. There needs to be more integration in Scotland and the guys need to get looked after, whether it’s by the PGA or whoever when they are turning pro. The first year is a nightmare. The really good guys get their card right away, but the others who are maybe good enough to get their card two or three years down the line are gone. They don’t get any help. In general terms, great golfers disappear.”
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