THE exotic-sounding Tanah Merah club in far off Singapore, gains the distinction on Thursday of playing host to the start of a new season on the PGA European Tour, with the staging of the Johnnie Walker Classic. It marks a milestone in the history of tournament golf in this country insofar as Ireland will be sending a record 13 challengers into action this year.
Indeed the current weII-being of the professional game here is further emphasised by the fact than an additional two players, David Feherty and the non-exempt Eoghan O'Connell, will also be making appearances at some stage of the season. And as an intriguing aside, no fewer than five of the Irish players - Philip Walton, Des Smyth, Christy O'Connor Jnr, Raymond Burns and John McHenry - are exponents of the broomhandle putter.
Numerically, things have certainly changed dramatically since the corresponding time 20 years ago when the country's hopes were carried by seven players. In fact very little has remained the same, other than the fact that an O'Connor is still the most seasoned representative: in 1976 it was the illustrious Christy Senior, then 51, while on this occasion it's his 47-year-old nephew, Christy Junior.
Back then, Eamonn Darcy, Liam Higgins, Paul Leonard, O'Connor Snr, John O'Leary, O'Connor Jnr and Eddie Polland, on the elite, top-60 exempted list. Meanwhile Arnold O'Connor, Roddy Carr, Jimmy Kinsella, David Jones and Smyth, laced the prospect of joining the dawn brigade for the dreaded, Monday pre-qualifying.
It was a highly significant season in the history of the professional game on this side of the Atlantic, insofar as the previous November, at the annual general meeting of the PGA, an autonomous Tournament Players's Division was created within the association. John Jacobs acted as adviser, Ken Schofield was secretary and George O'Grady was administrator of what was to develop into the European Tour as we know it today.
It was also a time when Sky Sports wasn't even a wild dream and everyone seemed to get a fair share from the eight televised tournaments out of the full list of 25 four of them, including the British Open, were designated to the BBC, three others went to ITV and the Irish Open was listed as the preserve of RTE. And long before he was seen to have any potential as a commentator, a 21-year-old Scot by the name of Ewen Murray, also found himself among the dawn brigade, having earned a modest 901 £in prize money the previous year.
Ten years on, in 1986, the old pre-qualifying days had gone and we now had an all- exempt tour based on the top-128 players from the previous season. And in all of the key elements, the Irish challenge had achieved significantly greater depth. Darcy, O Connor Jnr, Polland and O'Leary were survivors from the 1976 list, while Smyth and Jones had achieved promotion from the fringes. And the full complement of 10 representatives was completed by the youthful skills of Ronan Rafferty, Feherty, Walton and Jimmy Heggarty.
Looking back over those eventful, 20 years, Smyth expressed the view that the current players are far better prepared than he was, setting out. "In terms of coaching and quality of competition, they get a far more thorough grounding in the amateur game than was the case in my day," he said. "The result is that the transition to pro ranks is much smoother.
"This is particularly true of guys like Paul McGinley who had the good fortune to come through the college system in the US. Apart from learning the discipline of daily practice, he had the advantage of competitive strokeplay, usually over 54 holes, as opposed to the matchplay events which tend to dominate the amateur scene here at home."
He also approves of the change to an all-exempt tour, particularly from a financial standpoint. "During my early years of prequalifying, there could be as many as 70 or 80 of us competing for about 10 spots in the tournament," he recalled. "And if the event happened to be the German Open, or the Spanish Open, and you failed to make it, you had travelled a long way for one competitive round and a dwindling bank balance.
Smyth went on: "The old system wasn't necessarily any easier, with only the top-60 players exempt. For instance if it was still in operation. I wouldn't have held my card last season, given that I finished 82nd in the Order of Merit. As for scoring, I don't think there's much difference in the sort of performance that's necessary to win a tournament. A crucial change, however, is that there are now far more guys capable of winning."
THE first tour school was held over the Foxhills and Walton Heath courses in 1976 when 127 players earned their cards from an entry of
261. Of those, only nine players, or 7.08 per cent, subsequently retained their membership of the tour at the end of the year. Last November, at the San Rogue and Guadalmina courses on Spain's Costa del Sol, 40 players were successful out of an original entry of over 600. The experience of recent years would suggest that I 3 of them, or 32.5 per cent, will have retained their membership by this time next year.
It is to be hoped that those 13 will include the five players who gave Ireland an unprecedented success-rate two months ago. Of the eight competitors who reached the final stage, Brendan McGovern (93rd), Stephen Hamill (106th) and O'Connell (177th) were the only failures. And it should be noted that the Killarney player was forced to withdraw after the third round because of injury.
The survivors were Francis Howley (11th), Padraig Harrington (16th), McHenry (17th), David Higgins (31st) and Heggarty (35th). It was a particularly gratifying exercise for 39-year-old Heggarty who, after clinging onto his card since 1976, eventually lost it at the end of the 1992 season when he slipped to a dispiriting, 164th in the final Order of Merit.
"When I was growing up, the only Irish golfers that we heard about were Christy (O'Connor) and Harry (Bradshaw)," added Smyth. "Now we have a number of players capable of competing with the best in Europe. And I don't go along with the notion that they're getting silver-spoon treatment: through sponsorship and the various other perks of the tournament scene. If they don't produce, those bonuses are very soon stripped away. Believe me, it's tough out there."
To illustrate the point, one need only reflect on the fortunes of a young Swede by the name of Magnus Persson. He will be remembered by enthusiasts in this country for his stunning, Irish Open performance at Royal Dublin in 1984. Only 19 at the time, Persson shot opening rounds of 66 and 65 to three strokes clear of the eventual winner, Bernhard Langer, at the halfway stage.
From there, however, he tumbled down the leaderboard with a third round of 76 and eventually finished seventh. Last November and still only 30, Persson was among the 183 competitors in the final stage of the Tour School. He shot rounds of 79, 79, 75 and 72 for an aggregate of 305 to miss the fourth round cut by no fewer than 11 strokes. What next for a player who, in 1985, finished runner-up to none other than Greg Norman in the Australian PGA Championship?
Meanwhile, Ireland's leading players will be making a staggered start to the year's activity. While competitors such as Darren Clarke and Paul McGinley go into action this week, Walton, who was last season's most successful Irish campaigner, is waiting until the tour comes home, so to speak.
That will be on February 29th when the first tournament in Europe happens to be the Catalan Open in which he will be defending the title. After the rigours of an extremely demanding Ryder Cup qualifying campaign last year and then the event itself at Oak Hill, Walton has taken an extended, winter break from competitive action.
Earlier this month, however, he embarked on a rigorous training regime so as to be physically prepared for the forthcoming challenge which also involves the defence of the English Open title at the Forest of Arden from June 6th to 9th. "I am making no predictions," he said guardedly. "But there is no way I would be content to sit back on the achievements of last season. If anything, I viewed that as a new beginning to my tournament career. I firmly believe my best performances have yet to come.
My own wishes for the season? That the youngsters, Howley, Harrington and Higgins do themselves proud. That Irish players mount a serious challenge for the British Open, as Rafferty and David Feherty did at Turnberry two years ago. That McGinley achieves the deserved breakthrough of a tournament victory. That Feherty finds the serenity to successfully resume his tournament career. And that Clarke remembers that qualifying for the 1997 Ryder Cup starts with the British Masters at Collingtree Park on August 29th.
