Golf: Scott Henry faced uphill task in Alps events without funding

SCOTT Henry used the Alps Tour to start climbing the ladder in European golf and now he’s looking forward to a first full season on the Challenge Tour without worrying if he’ll be able to afford to play from one week to the next.

The 25-year-old revealed the level of pressure he’s been playing under in the first few years of his professional career after receiving a timely boost ahead of the second-tier circuit cranking up in earnest for the season in France tomorrow.

It has come in the shape of support from the body set up to direct £1million worth of Scottish Government money towards helping the country’s brighest young prospects as they try to find their feet in the professional ranks.

Along with fellow Challenge Tour players Callum Macaulay and Gavin Dear, as well as Ladies European Tour player Kylie Walker, Henry, one of Scotland’s most decorated amateurs over the last decade, is getting backing worth £23,000 this year as he bids to keep moving up that ladder.

It means he can concentrate on his game rather than fretting about whether or not any given event might have been his last one, having found himself working long hours in a bar last winter to try to make ends meet.

“Towards the end of last year, when I knew I had my Challenge Tour card, I was going to Tour School and I knew at second stage that, if I got to the final, [he missed by a shot] I couldn’t afford it anyway,” said Henry, who bagged four national amateur titles, including the Scottish Stroke-Play, between 2004 and 2006.

“If you played the three stages, the cost could be about £6,000 or £7,000. I obviously wanted to get there, but I had no money to fund it. So to find out I was getting this support was such a relief. Last winter I worked four months solid in a bar, doing 12-hour shifts and I could barely practice. That was the all-time low in my career.

“I still believed that I could find a way to get back, but to get this opportunity is such a big weight off my shoulders. I felt as though I’d missed the boat in terms of funding. My first year didn’t go to plan but, year on year, I’ve got better.

“This is my fourth year now. But, obviously, the criteria was Challenge Tour so that’s why I was delighted to get my card. I felt like I should’ve been in the mix for it.

“I’ve had plenty of experience and now I feel my game is where it needs to be at any level, never mind the Challenge Tour. I felt pressure when I started out. Not pressure to compete, it was more the financial pressure.

“I felt ready to go, but my game wasn’t really ready and it took me a year or two to get comfortable with all the travelling and the organising but now it’s second nature.

“I never feared I’d never make it. I always believed I’d do it. Now I have the support the belief is stronger than it’s ever been.”

Henry’s first win in the pro ranks came in the Gosser Open, an Alps Tour event in Austria, last June. More recently, he beat one of the strongest fields ever assembled for a Tartan Tour event to win the Optical Express 36-holer at Spey Valley in Aviemore.

“At this time of the year my game is absolutely where it needs to be and I’m ready to go,” added the Clydebank man who, on top of a training trip to Spain this winter, also spent time in America, where he practised at Sea Island in Georgia along with Macaulay.

“If I didn’t have the backing, I’d be just starting now and I’d be three or four months behind. Winning the Optical Express event was a huge lift. All I play for is to win, I’m maybe not going to do that but you have to have that attitude.

“Last year I was still trying to figure out how I would get through a season. You’ll not make a profit on the third tier but it toughens you up.

“The goal now is the European Tour this year, whatever card it is. Last year, the way I got my Challenge Tour card, I was playing each week knowing I had to get money to play the next week. It was great that I was able to do that under that pressure.”

Henry is among eight Scots in the field for the Allianz Brittany Open staring tomorrow, joining Dear, Michael Stewart, Wallace Booth, Duncan Stewart, David Law, Jack Doherty and Elliot Saltman in the £130,000 event.

Macaulay, meanwhile, is playing in the co-sanctioned Madeira Islands Open along with former winner Alastair Forsyth, Craig Lee, Steven O’Hara, Gary Orr, Raymond Russell, Lloyd Saltman, Chris Doak, Jamie McLeary, Andrew McArthur and Scott Drummond.