Not many are as high profile or as dramatic as Graeme Storm’s redemptive play-off victory over Rory McIlroy last weekend, but every professional golfer will have a ‘sliding doors’ moment.
It’s just the nature of the sport.
One tournament, one round, one hole, one shot, or in Storm’s case one Patrick Reed giving him a European Tour lifeline, can define a career.
For Perthshire’s Bradley Neil, a nerve-shredding short putt at Q School in November could be his game-changer.
Hole it and he was guaranteed full playing rights on the second tier Challenge Tour this year. Miss it and it would have been a winter of self-doubt and another season without regular golf.
The putt dropped, and the former Amateur champion who has rubbed shoulders with the greats of the game at The Open, The Masters and the US Open, is a golfer re-born.
An invitation to the Australian PGA Championship swiftly followed and Neil’s first cut at the top level was made. And now the Blairgowrie Golf Club member is preparing for his March start in Kenya with renewed confidence and purpose.
“It’s fantastic to know that it’s just a couple of months away and I can plan my schedule,” he said. “It’s now a full-time job.
“I was always working every day but this year feels different.
“Last year there was only one event I got into before the week of the tournament.
“There was one in Ireland that I got into on the Tuesday afternoon. I drove from here all the way to the south of Dublin on the Wednesday from four o’clock in the morning. When I arrived I was told I could play in the pro-am but I had to be ready in five minutes! I’d driven for seven hours and hit no balls.
“I was going onto the tee still doing my belt up and sorting my bag out – the old fashioned club medal route.
“I’m hoping this season will be like 2014 when I had a full amateur schedule and I knew what events I was playing.
“This is a good chance for me. I’m gaining some momentum and my game is coming together after working really hard for a year-and-a-half.”
Golfers – particularly those who choose not to look at leaderboards – sometimes only appreciate the enormity of a putt when they are in the clubhouse. Not Neil. He knew only too well what was riding on his performance on the 18th green of the Catalunya Resort’s Stadium Course.
“In the fourth round (cut round) things flashed back from earlier in the season,” he recalled.
“I knew what I needed to do to get my Challenge Tour card. If I dropped one more shot I was out. I’d known the situation from about the 13th hole.
“It was dreadful.
“I’ve had putts to win The Amateur, putts in The Open and The Masters. But, put them all together, and this was still the worst feeling standing over one.
“It must have been about two-and-a-half to three feet, downhill, left to right.
“It was right at the end of the day when the greens can spike up.
“Closing it out was really satisfying.
“Tour School is a brutal place to be and I’m just glad I got through it. It’s fantastic I’ve come away with something.
“Things didn’t go the way I wanted them to at the start of my pro career.
“I was showing what I could do for 27 holes but the other nine were like how my dad would play. It was really frustrating but I knew it was there.
“I’m so excited about what’s to come.”
If the made-cut at Q school was hugely significant for the 21-year-old, so too was the made-cut in the Australian PGA.
“I should have done it in my very first one (European Tour event) in France but I bogeyed the last hole,” he said.
“I’ve been so fortunate that I’ve been around some experienced guys like George Murray, Pete Whiteford and Scott Henry.
“They tell you little things that help.
“I was thinking about some of them when I was coming down the last nine holes in Australia.
“After a few missed cuts I’d been saying to them ‘I’m hitting good shots and I feel like I’m playing well enough to make cuts, what sort of things are you doing?’ They said the same things, telling me to go back to how I played in my amateur days and play without the cut in my mind. ‘Don’t tighten up’.
“It was fantastic to travel so far and come back with a top 30.
“It was probably the most relaxed I’ve been in my pro career because I thought, ‘this doesn’t have any bearing on next year’.
“That level of relaxation that I was finally able to get to shows that if I’m in a comfortable position I can perform when it matters.
“There was still room for improvement though.”
Falling short of securing a European Tour card at Q School should be no bad thing for Neil. Scottish golf hasn’t had a great record of producing successful careers in recent years. But few would doubt that building a platform on the Challenge Tour and stepping up to the main tour from it give you the best chance of longevity.
If you make the top 15 and get the golden ticket, you will have learned how to win and how to be consistent.
“I’ve got loads of goals for this year,” Neil said.
“I don’t see why I can’t aim for top 15. Seeing other guys who I can relate to doing it, gives me belief.
“I don’t think they’re any better than me ability-wise.
“I think I could have done OK on the European Tour and could have got close to keeping my card but I’m on a tour where I think I can win.
“I’m comfortable and at home – knowing where I’m going. I want to keep building week in, week out and never look back.”
Golf might not be a team sport but Neil will be making sure he learns from more experienced peers when the opportunity presents itself.
“I’ll be a sponge and soak up as much as I can,” he said.
“At a tournament in Denmark last year I went to the gym and Lee Slattery was there.
“I looked at the equipment he was on to see how long he’d been going for. It was 20 minutes. He’d really been pushing himself.
“I did 20 or 30 minutes and by the time I left he was still going.
“A month or two later he won in Russia. It helped me realise that even though you’re working for that week, what you do is also helping you work for a few weeks down the line.”
Neil turned professional on the back of his big amateur win, his appearances at the three majors and the Junior Ryder Cup and signing a deal with Tiger Woods’ management company.
Life in the paid ranks had been a struggle. Had he made the leap too soon? Had his game deserted him? Was he made of the right stuff to cope? If he wasn’t asking those sort of questions of himself there were plenty in the Scottish golf community who were.
“I’ve been fortunate that the people around me are really genuine,” Neil said. “They’ve seen me grow up and play since I was three.
“Everyone in this golf club (Blairgowrie) has been fantastic – the guys in the pro shop and the members.
“There have been some brutal times but I have never fallen out of love with golf. Some do.
“There are a lot of different routes (in pro golf) but it all comes down to who wants it more and who doesn’t get broken down mentally.”
