Pete Cowen
I’ve just got back from working with the lads prior to the start of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship and I’m glad to be home. The range at St. Andrews must be one of the coldest in the world due to that hard left to right wind. It’s bad enough during The Open let alone the end of September.
While I was there it was sad to hear the EuroPro Tour, run by boxing promotor Eddie Hearn, had closed after 20 years. It’s certainly given plenty of golfers an opportunity to shine over the years, but no doubt other smaller Tours will follow suit, as finding sponsors is getting harder.
Kids trying to live the dream and become a Tour player need to be more realistic. I don’t blame them for trying but making the cut on these mini-Tours shouldn’t guarantee a living. If they can’t regularly make the top 10, making it on the main Tour with the best in the world is never going to happen. Mini Tours have always been a good introduction for players to dip their toes into the professional game. Now, too many kids see the big names earning huge amounts of money and fancy a piece of the action. There are countless talented players but the opportunities to shine are becoming fewer. The potential young stars will have to learn to graft for their dream. In the same way I did along with other Tour professionals back in the day.
When I first turned pro, I was still working at Marks & Spencer and in a mill during the winter and offseason to make ends meet. When the season got underway in April, we would travel to play the national championships in France, Spain, and Portugal. Sleeping in the car or van was the norm for many of us and the 150-player field would be competing for 35 prizes. So, countless times I would be playing for a huge loss. In many ways you were self-funding your dream and when you consider that Peter Oosterhuis won the Order of Merit five times and pocketed no more than £100,000 during that time you might understand what professional golf was all about back then. It was more like a vocation than a profession and that must be the mindset of the youngsters coming through.
That also breeds hunger which is an essential piece of the puzzle. Hunger makes winners and for some big names the lack of hunger has ended their careers.
I still believe that the DP World Tour is missing a huge opportunity by not offering Monday qualifiers for their events. Hopefully, the closure of the EuroPro Tour will open their eyes so they can see there is a talent pool crying out to have one shot of making their dream come true. This has been a success for the PGA TOUR over the years and the platform for players such as John Daly to spring on to the scene.
One thing we can’t ignore is the impact of LIV Golf and despite what you read in the press things are starting to calm down a little and it’s clear that things will find a natural path to resolve the situation .
Golf needs to focus more on the young talent and not on the Tours. It’s the golfers people want to follow not the politics. Right now, Europe has the Hojgaard twins and even though Rasmus should have won the French Open last month it was great to see the 25-year-old Italian Migliozzi win with a blistering final round of 62.
Another talented young Italian to keep an eye on is Filippo Celli. He was the leading amateur at The Open this year and led the Italian team to victory last month at the World Amateur Team Championships in France.
With the DP World Tour Championship just round the corner it will be interesting to see which players will make the most of the final Rolex Series tournament of the year.
Having McIlroy, Lowry, and Fitzpatrick in form, it should be a brilliant event, but there is always that unknown player who makes a charge when the pressure is off.
