Golf Tour qualifyingPhilip Walton, who holed the winning putt for Europe at the 1995 Ryder Cup, tees off this week in a field of 168 at the European Tour qualifying school finals in Spain.
The Malahide golfer and the other hopefuls will be battling it out at the San Roque Club, Cadiz, for 35 places on the 2005 European Tour.
Starting on Thursday, each competitor will play two rounds apiece over San Roque's Old and New Courses, before the field is cut to the leading 75 and ties for the final two rounds.
On Tuesday, the top 35 players will earn tour cards for next year.
The 42-year-old Walton, whose last European Tour victory came at the 1995 English Open, will be joined by five other Irish hopefuls: Colm Moriarty, Raymond Burns, Stephen Browne, Michael Hoey and David Higgins.
There are also 24 other former tour winners at San Roque, among them Britain's Roger Chapman and Peter Baker, the oldest and the busiest, respectively.
Chapman, a Walker Cup player as long ago as 1981, is now 45 and the oldest player in southern Spain. Baker, a former Walker and Ryder Cup player, has competed in more events than anyone else on the tour this year in an unavailing attempt to avoid qualifying school, and is amazed to find that the sky actually has not fallen in.
"I thought it would be the end of the world if I lost my card," said the 37-year-old Baker, "but in a funny sort of way it's been a relief. For the past two or three years I've struggled even to get my game halfway decent and I haven't enjoyed it.
"So do you start again and think, 'Let's get things right this time', and if you do that will that improve your enthusiasm? At the moment I think yes and yes."
Baker missed an eight-foot putt on the last hole at Baltray in the Irish Open and it cost him €17,000. He would not have been in Spain had it gone in, but, as Chapman said, everyone has a tale like that.
"In the Majorca tournament," he said, "I tied for 60th. Over the weekend I had 36 and 38 putts; 30 is about average, so if you take 14 shots off my score I've made my card."
Chapman's putting has become so desperate that he is even using the long putter. "It's not a proper stroke. Golf is meant to be played with two hands," he said. "But when you've just finished 158th in the putting stats then something has to be done."
