GOLF BOOK CLUB: Bring me the head of Sergio Garcia!by Tom Cox

A NUMBER of years back, Tom Cox, a decent club amateur with a sense that he hadn’t given his dream a full chance, decided that he would turn professional. Just like that. Unlike Shane Lowry, a plus-five handicapper who’d helped Ireland to back-to-back European Championships before his fairytale win in the recent Irish Open prompted him to make the step, Cox’s ability amounted to winning his club’s scratch cup and outdriving his high-handicap playing partners in the club fourball.

So, discarding the five-handicap which he had in his local club, Cox – who had shown some promise as a teenager before giving up the sport completely for eight years – turned professional and joined the shark-infested waters of earning a living by playing golf.

Unfortunately for Cox, even his choice of pro tour left him out of his depth. Which is good, actually. Because what we get here is a self-deprecating look at life on the professional circuit. The Europro Tour is a developmental tour that aims to give young players a stepping stone onto greater things, whether that be a life on the second tier Challenge Tour or, the real dream, a ticket to one day play on the European Tour.

Cox made the decision to turn pro after being encouraged by a playing partner in his club but, as a five-handicap 30-year-old with the semblance of a hangover when he finally chose to do so, his motives seemed less thought through than perhaps they should have been.

A case in point? When Cox attended the Europro Tour’s qualifying school, he played the wrong course in his practice round. Then, in the first round of qualifying, he had intended to mark his Titleist with cox’s apples so as to distinguish his ball from anyone else’s but instead simply put three green dots on. So, when only a few holes into the qualifying he noticed that there were only two dots on the ball, the penny dropped that he had somewhere along the line played a wrong ball.

Disqualification followed, and obviously no card to play on the tour.

The ease with which Cox gave up his amateur status to play as a professional may surprise many readers. Of course, it is not the usual way. Most players who aspire to becoming professionals are, actually, very good players. Most have plus-handicaps.

Many chose a route through the PGA – training for three years as assistants – while the very elite amateur will make the transition to a life on tour, like Lowry.

What Cox did was to pick the impossible route. Maybe it was naivety, or maybe it was a desire to chase a dream that only materialised when he realised what he’d left behind when giving up the game in his late-teens when he was a promising player in the English midlands? Or, maybe, it was an excuse to write this book . . . and, if so, that was the only sensible decision as the book is a very funny read that not only manages to recount his escapades but also succeeds in giving an insight into the lonely life of a professional golfer struggling to earn a crust.

Along the way, he seeks the help of coaches and sports psychologists and just about anyone he thinks will enable him to become a better player. The problem for Cox is that things get worse as the season progresses. Although he didn’t get a Europro Tour card, he did manage to secure invites to play in golf tournaments and even managed to feature on a Sky Sports package of one particular tournament, if not for all the right reasons.

It was at a tournament at Bovey Castle – which he played blind, having taken almost nine hours to get from his home in Norfolk to Devon on traffic-congested roads – and he was about to play a chip shot to the green when he became aware of the cameraman focusing on him. What followed was a series of heavy-handed chip shots as Cox laboured to get the ball towards the hole. The funny thing is that the camera shots were not to do with his golf, but – as Cox later discovered – were part of a brief package on golf fashion!

That tournament finished for Cox with him taking 57 minutes to play the final hole (where he recorded a 10) – with the tee backed up – and pretty much confirmed that he had no place in the professional ranks, even if he did finish ahead of one-time footballer turned golfer, Lee Dixon.

As for the title? Sergio Garcia was Cox’s golfing hero, his wild unpredictability endearing him to the author. In actual fact, they have very little in common.

Questions for readers

Q1When Cox was disqualified from the qualifying school after discovering he had played the wrong ball, a number of his non-golfing friends wondered why he had raised the issue with officials. Was he right to do so?

Q2Do you think that Cox manages to convey the loneliness that many golfers experience in a life on the circuit? Q3 Apart from his own golfing "exploits", Cox interviews some ex-players – among them Liam White and Ken Brown – about their experiences. Does this work?

Q4Was Cox right to chase his dream, even if it led to embarrassments such as shooting the worst score of any in the regional qualifying for the 2006 British Open?

Q5How do you rate this book out of a possible top mark of 10?