Going full-time at amateur level

So near and yet so far. It was very disappointing coming so close to making it through to the next round of the European Tour Q-School, but the upshot is my professional ambitions are on hold for a year and I have an opportunity to dedicate a year to elite amateur golf.

That’s a real positive, because I’m interested to see how good I can be if I focus purely on golf rather than trying to balance that side of my life with college, as I have for the last four years at Maynooth University.

I’ll return to that, but I should explain how this all unravelled. I went to the first round of Q-School at Ribagolfe in Portugal and missed out on qualification. Not by much, just four shots, which works out at one shot per round, which is nothing really, but those fine margins have major consequences.