Have you ever wondered what you'd do if you didn't do what you currently do?

Of course, if you don't do anything these days then you don't need to worry about what you do. Unless you look after pigeons, then you have to be careful about what you do to your doos. It's all much ado about nothing really.

Here in the do-it-yourself world of golf, it's that time of the year again when the rank and file begin to ponder the imponderables; what the dickens will we do if we don't get our European Tour card?

While many of the leading lights are off to the money-soaked Turkish Airlines Open this week to dip their bread in the latest sloshing gravy boat that's getting passed round the top table as part of the circuit's lucrative 'Final Series', the hum-drum masses who are not feasting on this fine fare will be fighting it out with each other, like yelping hyenas tearing at the mouldering carcass of a stricken wildebeest, for a career lifeline in the qualifying school final.

It's the kind of week that illustrates the vast gulf between the haves and the have-nots of the European scene. In Turkey, it will be the kind of lavish, petal tossing pandering that was once the reserve of Babylonian princes. At the strip-backed q-school in Spain, meanwhile, the scene will be about as glamorous as a drizzly night spent mending a puncture at Harthill services.

Getting on the tour is hard enough. Trying to stay on it is harder still, it seems. By the end of the regular 2014 season, only eight of the 27 graduates from last year's qualifying school final had retained their playing rights for next year.

Take a peek at the Race to Dubai rankings and you'll very quickly see that this European Tour is, in fact,

a wildly fluctuating and uneven circuit full of tours within tours. Rory McIlroy, for instance, has racked up an eye-watering €5,400,700 from 14 official events this season and leads the money list by such an overwhelming margin that the phrase 'Race to Dubai' should be rebranded the 'Carefree Dander to Dubai'. In comparison, Anthony Wall, the Englishman who held on to his tour card by the skin of his teeth at No.111 on the order of merit, brought in €235,231 from 30 tournaments.

Wall, like many others, was operating on an entirely different playing field to the reigning Open and US PGA champion. The imbalance in prize money means that those in the lower echelons - and that invariably includes graduates from the qualifying school - are competing on a vastly different schedule and for a much lower percentage of the overall prize money on offer. There are more than 20 events, for instance, where the purses are €1.8m or less and these are the tournaments where the lesser lights need to make hay.

The four-event Final Series itself is worth $30m. Throw in the complex, inconsistent issue of tournament invitations - some with the right connections get them, others in these nod-and-wink affairs don't - and the scrap for survival becomes even more fraught. At the elite level, meanwhile, the rich get richer and these 'independent contractors' continue to pick and choose their events.

Of course, there is a simple solution for those in the lower categories of the tour's membership; play better. A programme of 30 events, which some of last year's q-school and Challenge Tour graduates got, is a decent crack at the whip, after all. It's a tough old business.

While the European Tour expands and consolidates in the emerging markets of Asia and the Middle East, the struggles for sponsorship in its traditional heartland remain. Here in Scotland, the good golfing folk continue to buck the trend. Last week, the Scottish Government and Aberdeen Asset Management secured the future of the flourishing Scottish Open through to 2020. There is no other event on the circuit with a six-year guarantee of backing. The Wales Open will not go ahead next year while England, home to six events on the European schedule back in 2000, continues to be starved of top-level tour golf, other than the BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth.

In Ireland, McIlroy has shown his support for his native land, and the tour, by coming on board as a partner for the Irish Open from next year. Perhaps this is an avenue that one or two of the other big hitters in the game could investigate further to give something back to a circuit that has given them plenty.

The likes of Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter and Justin Rose have often bemoaned the lack of tournament golf in their homeland but with their considerable financial clout and commercial lure, surely the combined forces of this kind of player power could be harnessed and used to develop an event of their own in the circuit's backyard. It would be a do-it-yourself initiative that could benefit the European Tour as a whole.