It’s that time of the season again when the scramble to hold on to a European Tour card leads to the kind of anxious, peering over the shoulders you’d tend to get when a tin can mysteriously rattles behind you as you’re gingerly shuffling down a dark alley.
For those players hovering perilously around the circuit’s trapdoor in the lower reaches of the European money list, the next fortnight will decide whether they tumble through it or cling on by their fingertips. This week’s Portugal Masters and next week’s Hong Kong Open have turned into last chance saloons – minus the stale stench of booze - and there are plenty of players preparing to shoogle the dice in a shaker and give it a final fling.
At 105th on the order of merit, Scott Jamieson is perched just inside the safety zone but with the leading 110 at the end of the campaign safeguarding their full playing privileges, the 31-year-old still has work to do. It’s uncharted territory for Jamieson. Since earning promotion to the main circuit for the 2011 season, the Glasgow man has occupied the kind of comfortable position you’d snuggle into with an eiderdown. He finished 59th on the money list during his rookie year, 53rd the next year, 31st in 2013 and 76th last season.
The 2015 campaign has certainly not been a disaster and from 26 strokeplay events he has made 18 cuts while racking up earnings of around £186,000. The difference this year compared to other years, however, is that he’s not had that big finish that makes a huge difference at this level. Over the previous four seasons, Jamieson has notched 18 top-10 finishes, including a maiden win in 2013, but his best finish in the current campaign has been a share of 11th in the Lyoness Open back in June. He could do with a good one now.
“I’ve never been in this situation before,” said Jamieson, who is around £8,800 ahead of the Chris Paisley, the player currently sitting in 110th spot. “It’s no one’s fault but my own and I just have to deal with it and get myself out of it. I’ve made just as many cuts, if not more, than I have in previous seasons on tour but I’ve not had the good weekends. It’s small margins and golf is like that. It comes and goes and you just have to stick with it, trust what you do, stay patient and believe that it will work out in the end.
“In the position that I’m in you have to look at it face on, look at the guys who are hovering around you and try and beat them. It’s as simple as that. The thought of not keeping my card is certainly alarming. It has crossed my mind. I’d still get a lot of events next year if the worst did happen and it wouldn’t be a complete write off. It’s certainly not the end but it’s something you don’t want to deal with.”
The Portugal Masters has been something of a happy hunting ground for Jamieson in recent years. He shared seventh last season and blasted a sparkling 11-under 60 en route to a 13th place finish a year earlier. Jamieson wouldn’t mind flinging one of those numbers in this week but, despite the mounting pressure, the former Scottish amateur No 1 is adopting a calm, philosophical approach. “I’m going out to play golf, that’s all it is,” he said. “If I start treating it as more than what it is, then the task will only get harder. One good week and the whole thing changes.”
Prior to flying out to the Algarve for what will be a tense week, Jamieson popped into Hampden Park to perform an equally pressurised task … the draw for the semi-finals of the Petrofac Training Cup.
He’ll be hoping to pull something special out of the bag over the next fortnight.
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