Irish quartet hoping to ‘graduate’ with Euro Tour cards

JUST because you’ve been there, done that and bought the tee shirt, doesn’t mean you have any right to cruise through the six-day “prison sentence” they call the European Tour Qualifying School final stage.

It was Philip Walton who said that the 108-hole battle for a European Tour card is about as enjoyable as a stint in Mountjoy. While the Dubliner isn’t a member of the Irish quartet who will continue their card odyssey at PGA de Catalunya near Girona in northeast Spain — the men in question are Niall Kearney, Simon Thornton, Colm Moriarty and Damian Mooney — he can identify with some of the fallen idols who tee it up on the Stadium and Tour courses today.

Take Scotland’s Andrew Coltart and Sweden’s Jarmo Sandelin, who felt the stomach churning pressure of Ryder Cup action in the “Bear Pit” of Brookline in 1999. Or England’s Paul Broadhurst, a member of the Ryder Cup side that lost the War on the Shore at Kiawah Island in 1991.