It’s not cheap birling around the world as a touring golfer. A quick squint at a player’s expenses sheet during a season, for instance, would make Auric Goldfinger splutter over his bullion.
Now that we’ve got a Bond villain referenced in the first couple of paragraphs, we may as well carry on with the 007 theme.
Thanks to some valuable assistance from the Sean Connery Foundation, Laura Beveridge has been given a timely financial tonic as she embarks on another season at the coalface of the Ladies European Tour. Not quite Licence to Kill, more licence to help with some of the bills?
“Sir Sean was really into golf and his family were keen to give something back to the game in Scotland,” said Beveridge, who tees-off the 2024 campaign at this week’s Magical Kenya Open. “There’s a real gap in the financial support packages for women golfers in this country.
“I’ve been lucky that I have a great backer in Saltire Energy and this added support gives me that extra bit of help. I was looking at my expenses from last year and they were upwards of £50,000. And that’s me doing it as economically as possible.
“When you look at those expenses as a number it can be quite daunting. But that’s what makes me work hard. If everything is handed to you on a plate, you may not put in the grind. You have to put in the work to cover your costs and make some money.”
There are no cheap return tickets to Mombasa, where Beveridge is camped this week, but the former Scottish Women’s Amateur champion is hoping for a decent return over the next few days.
At the end of 2023, she lost her full tour card by just three places on the order of merit but her ranking will still get her plenty of playing opportunities during the new season.
“I’ll probably get into 70 to 75 per cent of the events,” she noted. “But there’s also a re-rank after the first third of the season so if I get off to a hot start, I can be bumped up and get into more. That’s the goal; to hit the ground running.”
For the second season in a row, Beveridge will have husband, Keil, for company as her full-time caddie. “It’s not ended in separate rooms yet,” she said with a chuckle.
The ups, downs, what-ifs and if-onlys of this tormenting game of wildly fluctuating fortunes could test the strongest of wedding vows as a few costly shots go spiralling down the cundy, but the Beveridge wife and hubby alliance is in fine fettle.
“From my perspective it made sense to do it,” said Beveridge, of the decision to follow well-kent Scottish golfing partnerships like Catriona and Graeme Matthew and David and Vicky Drysdale. “Keil is my coach too and if I was away, it was a bit of a hassle sending him videos of my swing if I needed something fixed.
“He’s now here, he can see it with his own eyes. We did think it might be too much, though. He’s my coach, my caddie and my husband.
“But we have a pretty good routine going. He goes off and does his course walk and takes notes and I do my thing. We’re good at separating the professional side from the personal side too. And whatever happens, I do still love him at the end of the day.”
Love, as they say, conquers all. Yes, even a wrong yardage into the seventh or a misread on the 14th green.
The Ladies European Tour (LET) will boast overall prize money this year of nearly £30 million, although a proposed merger with the lucrative LPGA Tour was put on hold at the end of 2023.
While the two circuits will continue with a harmonious strategic partnership, the growing influence of Saudi Arabia’s golfing pot of gold – the LET gets $10 million out of it – was a significant factor in the decision to postpone the act of union. The future is bright, if not entirely clear.
“I’m not sure what happens after this year but I think the general feeling is it’s all positive,” said Beveridge. “The LET is now in good shape. There’s money, more events, more exposure. It’s all heading in the right direction.”
For Beveridge, and her husband, it’s onwards and, hopefully, upwards too.
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