Sunday 25 March 2018 23:57, UK
After Tony Romo finished last on his PGA Tour debut, David Livingstone looks at why retired sportsmen will always struggle to make the grade as a professional golfer.
A golfer on the PGA Tour signed for an 82 last Friday and promptly declared himself to be quite pleased. Furthermore, he said he was looking forward with confidence.
Given that he had missed the cut by a mile and finished dead last, you might have expected any Tournament Official listening to his comments to gently lead him away for psychological evaluation.
But no, this guy is different. His name is Tony Romo.
A renowned quarterback with the Dallas Cowboys, Romo is a member of American sporting royalty and, as such, can do no wrong. Already underway in a second career as a television commentator, he's now having a crack at a third, as a golfer on the PGA Tour.
Unlike other golfing fantasists, Romo can rely on a fast track into Tour events with sponsors' invitations, but that won't last forever. He'll have to earn his place eventually. In the meantime he's on a well-trodden path. He's not the first and won't be the last professional sports star to think he can be the next big thing in golf.
On both sides of the Atlantic, top players in other games have tried the switch to golf, hoping their innate sense of coordination would be enough to crack the code. Sadly, the record books show they've all been failures, even if a more generous assessment would salute their sense of adventure.
Ivan Lendl, who won everything in tennis except Wimbledon, embarked on a professional golf career late last century. Alas, his Tour record is not pretty. Events played, three; cuts made none. Lowest career round, 76. And he also made two appearances in the Czech Open, with similar results!
Former West Ham player Julian Dicks, known affectionately as The Terminator because of his "no nonsense" approach to tackling, turned to golf when injury ended his football career. Having started playing at the age of 22, he was a scratch player by 27 and was sharing coaches with the likes of Colin Montgomerie.
Unfortunately, he didn't share any of Monty's success. He couldn't control his temper and, having smashed up several sets of golf clubs, he brought his modest golfing career to an end citing the same knee injury that stopped him playing football.
Strangely enough, it was also a knee injury that more recently ended the football career of Jimmy Bullard. Cheeky Chappie Jimmy decided to find a new job, saying: "I want to be known as a golfer, not a former footballer."
These were not the words of a cosseted prima donna because Bullard had played in every level of English football from the basement to the Premier League.
However, when he turned pro in 2013 and starting competing on the Euro Pro Tour, he found it strange to be competing against players who were living in a tent when he was staying in a £270 a night luxury hotel room. The irony is that the camper golfers probably played better than Jimmy did.
Admittedly, he had the distraction of being a contestant in I'm a Celebrity in 2014. He didn't make the cut there either, being the first to be eliminated. His consolation was a generous cheque for just turning up, but that doesn't happen in golf, as Jimmy well knows, and having studied Euro Pro results, I can find no evidence of him earning a penny.
There are so many divisions of quality from good amateur to top pro it would take a book to list them.
So why can't even the most talented athletes make it in golf? Surely, their newly-honed skill and their ingrained mental strength should make it possible to at least hold their own.
Well, don't expect any sympathy from those who've followed a more traditional route.
One European Tour veteran told me: "You can't just get yourself a bag with your name on it, practice for a few months, and then go out and take on guys who've been playing the game all their lives and who've been on Tour for years. It's like someone going to car mechanic classes at night school and then trying to build a Ferrari."
That seems a bit harsh but he's right. The road to glory is littered with broken dreams.
Next time someone tells you there's a kid in their golf club who's going right to the top of the game, just ask them if they know how many levels that youngster will have to go through to get to the top. There are so many divisions of quality from good amateur to top pro it would take a book to list them.
Some youngsters like Sergio Garcia, Rory McIlroy, and, of course, Tiger Woods are so outstandingly good they bypass that whole structure and go straight to the top. But any other Tour player anywhere in the world will tell you how difficult it is to consolidate a position in the elite ranks.
After all, beneath them in golf's world order are thousands of superb golfers who can shoot in the sixties week in week out playing with their friends but who can't cut it in tournament play.
A friend of mine is one of them. A low handicap golfer in his forties with delusions of grandeur, he prepared for his dream of playing on the European Seniors Tour.
He practiced for years and worked tirelessly on his mental approached to the game, naively hoping he'd be able to compete with players who'd being grinding on the European Tour their whole adult life.
Having turned 50, he set off to the Seniors Tour qualifying school with a spring in his step. He left crushed, unable to break 80, and, understandably, he reassessed his ambitions and came to the conclusion that he couldn't make money playing golf.
Then again, he was short on confidence… and, of course, he didn't know about a rich guy called Tony Romo who also struggles to break 80.
