BOBBY Jones, Byron Nelson and 1981 Open champion Bill Rogers did it. Walked away from golf with at least a decade left in them at the top-level, that is.

However, it is hard to come up with too many others who threw up their hands and did the same thing. In women's golf, for example, there is really only Jane Connachan.

Five years ago, the then 27-year-old from Prestonpans, a five-time winner on the Women's European Tour, decided she had had enough of traipsing around the world, clubs on back and suitcase in hand.

That sounds awfully young and it is, but Connachan was an old 27. A child prodigy, she had been playing competitive golf constantly since the age of 10 and, in those 17 years she had accumulated a record almost unparalleled in one so callow.

She first played for Scotland when she was 15, a time when she won everything in junior golf. At 18, she was Scottish champion and holder of the British Strokeplay title.

Twice she played in the Curtis Cup against the Americans before turning pro at the end of 1983. The wins did not come along quite as regularly in the paid ranks, but she was not often out of the top-10 money winners before it all became too much for her.

``I got scunnered,'' she says now, looking out over the Fenton Barns driving range in her home county of East Lothian, where she teaches everyone from beginners to the Scottish women's amateur squad. ``If I'd been a tennis player, you'd call it burn-out. I just didn't enjoy playing any more and got very stressed by the whole thing.''

Almost comically, her relief from that stress came in a level of self-abuse that elevated from constant criticism of the stupid shots she had hit, all the way to the infliction of actual physical pain as punishment. ``I'd get very angry with myself, even on the first tee,'' she says.

``I just wanted to scream, because I really didn't want to be there. Eventually, I got to the stage where the only way I could get rid of my anger was to punch golf clubs.

``I'd hold the clubface up in front of me and give it a good thump with my fist. The back of my right hand was constantly swollen.''

That was bad enough, but it got worse before it got better. ``I remember hitting this shot in a tournament,'' she continues. ``It wasn't that bad a shot, but it didn't go quite where I wanted it to. I was so angry that I raked my nails right across my forehead, lifting the skin right off. There was blood everywhere. My caddie couldn't believe it.''

Looking back now, it is clear that Connachan needed help, but, as people do, she let her unhappiness fester. ``I waited too long,'' she admits. ``It took two years for all of this to build up. It was strange, but at least the only person I was hurting was myself.''

The final decision to quit came in August of '91. Which, of course, begged the question of what to do next. ``That was spooky,'' she says. ``I was lucky that I had been working part-time for Jimmy Hume at Gullane on breaks from the tour. When I stopped playing, he took me on as a full-time assistant.''

Two years on, she was a fully-qualified PGA pro, ready to test herself on the open market, no easy task for a woman in what is still almost exclusively a man's world. ``Women still don't get a good deal in golf,'' she says. ``When I first qualified in 1993, a job came up in Edinburgh. The word was that it had been filled, so I didn't bother to apply. Then one day the president of the club came to Fenton Barns to ask me to send in my cv. I did but never received a reply.''

There were other knocks, too. ``More than once I've heard through the grapevine that I would never get a particular job because of my sex.'' They didn't think I would attract male customers.''

Happily, that has not proved the case at Fenton Barns, where #12.50 will buy you half an hour of Connachan's time. ``The majority of my lessons are with women,'' she admits. ``But the men I've taught keep coming back. The funny thing is, a lot of the men come from Muirfield and Luffness, where there are no women members.''

Her teaching is based on sound principles. ``I try not to use a lot of technical jargon,'' she insists. ``People get too bogged down with myths, like keeping their head down.

``I like to give people things they can easily understand and visualise. And, if one swing thought doesn't work, I'll keep trying until we find one that does.

``There are five basic swing moves I like to see. There's transfer and turn on the backswing, and the three 90 degree angles - shoulders, wrists, and the right elbow. Everything I teach revolves around them.''

As for her own golf, Connachan admits to playing eight rounds so far this year and, with time running out, it does not look as if she will make it into double figures. Not that she's at all bothered.

``I've never been happier,'' she claims. ``Life is great.''

Don't you just love a happy ending?