Successful amateur careers don’t always translate to plenty of cheques in the professional ranks. In fact, a lot of our best amateurs over the last decade have been scrimping and saving on golf’s mini tours.
The squeeze from the top down is suffocating those trying to climb the golfing ladder. The loss of the EuroPro Tour in 2022 has made the gap between mini tours and Europe’s second tier (HotelPlanner Tour) even greater.
The HotelPlanner Tour (formerly Challenge Tour) seems like the short term holy grail for many aspiring Irish professionals given its access to the DP World Tour.
But even at that there is barely room to breathe with the 2026 season set to have reduced DP World Tour cards available.
Next year the HotelPlanner Tour’s Road to Mallorca will reduce the number of DP World Tour cards available from 20 to 15 while the top-20 and ties who would normally earn cards at Q-School will also be whittled down to just 15 – the 20 cards currently available are already quite weak in terms of starts, with a dozen Irish hoping to grab one over the next few weeks.
This week, the Clutch Pro Tour had its season finale at the Tour Championship with five ex Irish Walker Cup players in the field. The Walker Cup is traditionally known as the pinnacle of amateur golf but that doesn’t necessarily mean you will be a star turn in the pro ranks.
It was an Irish 1-2 in Abu Dhabi as Mark Power secured his maiden professional victory while Alex Maguire was second as he ended his season on a high after a good showing at the Irish Open last month.
24-year-old Maguire got stung at Q-School but Power, 25, will hope he can spring forward and get some HotelPlanner Tour status at a minimum.
Experienced campaigners Cormac Sharvin and Paul McBride, Walker Cup players from 2015 and 2017 respectively and both aged in their 30s, will be hoping they have get necessary competitive sharpness for Q-School on Thursday as they look to resurrect their tour careers.
But it’s the emotions of Mallow’s James Sugrue that show the harsh reality of golf’s rat race to the top of the mountain and why many stumble and eventually fall rather than reach the peak.
The 28-year-old finished in a share of sixth place at the Tour Championship which gave him the third and final full HotelPlanner Tour card for next season.
Sugrue burst onto the scene in 2019, winning the Amateur Championship in Portmarnock which led to an Open Championship appearance in Royal Portrush and a Walker Cup appearance in Hoylake.
Masters and US Open berths followed but covid and injuries hampered him when he turned professional in 2021. 2025 proved to be his first full season in three years.
You could say he was due a break… He will join Ronan Mullarney who also earned his card via the Alps Tour – another satellite venture.
“I got injured, and then just after returning, I broke my ankle so I was out for another 18 months, and this is the first time I’ve played a full season in three years,” Sugrue explained. “So I’m just delighted to be back playing at the sort of level that I know I can play at. There’s no room for a bad stretch or missing a few cuts when you’re playing on this tour with only three cards to aim for, and I played consistently well all year. I think I deserve this card.”
But while 28-year-old Rob Brazill doesn’t want to be caught on the third tier playing into his 30s and McBride battles father time in the same respect, as Sharvin bids to forge a second career having given up the game briefly, Sugrue knew that the two Clutch Tour playoff events had him in shit or bust territory.
Now set for Europe’s second tier, Sugrue wants to make up for lost time and do his professional career some justice.
“I knew that this was pretty much my career on the line because I’m not getting any younger and I want to be playing on the HotelPlanner Tour or on the main DP World Tour. I probably put a lot of pressure on myself the last couple of weeks, telling myself that you have to do the business here, so yeah, I’m absolutely delighted.
“I said to the lads, ‘it’s now all duck or no dinner’,” added Sugrue who earned just over £3,000 for his efforts in the event, knowing that this was about points rather than pounds.
The HotelPlanner Tour isn’t a lucrative experience either with 2024 graduate Conor Purcell stating it isn’t a tour that you want to be playing on for too long and that a top-10 finish is needed to break even for the week.
But it’s better than sharing tenth place and pocketing just over £1,000 and making a loss and promotion from the Clutch Pro Tour opens the door to that vital sponsorship boost and a potential Golf Ireland grant.
If Sugrue and co can hit the ground running there is cash to gain. For example, Liam Nolan has earned €66,000 in his maiden HotelPlanner Tour campaign so there is space to breathe.
