Craig Howie felt 'ridiculously rusty' after lengthy time off following surgery

Peebles player now ready and raring to go again at start of 2024 Challenge Tour campaign

Craig Howie in action during the Rolex Challenge Tour Grand Final supported by the R&A 2023 at Club de Golf Alcanada in Mallorca in November. Picture: Angel Martinez/Getty Images.

Craig Howie isn’t sure what to expect in the opening event of the 2024 Challenge Tour campaign in South Africa this week after undergoing surgery for a tumour since his last competitive outing in mid-November.

The Peebles player is flying the Saltire in the SDC Open along with Michael Stewart, Daniel Young and Jack McDonald as the new season gets underway on Thursday at Zebula Golf Estate & Spa in Limpopo.

“Yeah, looking forward to getting going,” said Howie, who is once again representing Al Ain Equestrian, Shooting & Golf Club in the UAE on the second-tier circuit, as he looked forward to a run of four successive events in South Africa.

“It’s been a long winter for me, so I’m looking forward to the start of the season. The off-season has been quite difficult for me actually as I never played at all after Q-School until the first week of January. I needed to get surgery in December, so I was out of the game for seven or eight weeks, which is a long time for me.

“I managed to get a good couple of weeks of practice out in Al Ain in January, but I was ridiculously rusty and the game was very difficult for a week and a half. But, day by day out in Al Ain, I felt I was slowly getting there and the game is a lot sharper now than it was a month ago. It will be interesting to see what happens when I get going tomorrow as I really don’t know what to expect.”

Helped by making the cut in all four tournaments on last year’s South African Swing, Howie was feeling good about regaining his DP World Tour card heading into the second half of the campaign before ending up 39th in the Road to Mallorca Rankings.

“I was really disappointed with my year last year,” admitted the 29-year-old, who graduated to the main tour along with Ewen Ferguson at the end of the 2021 campaign only to lose his place at the top table after one season. “I got off to a good start and, in May, if you’d told me I was going to finish 39th, I would have told you you’d be talking nonsense as I felt quite confident that my game was good.

“But, during the summer, it slowly slipped away, then I had a few health issues at the back end of the year that made things quite difficult. It ended up being a disappointing campaign, so I am looking forward to putting that completely behind me and moving on.”

As has been the case over the past few years, 20 DP World Tour cards are up for grab during a campaign that will visit the home of golf in August for the Farmfoods Scottish Challenge supported by The R&A. “We all want to finish in the top 20 and get our cards back,” admitted Howie, “but I’m just happy to be back playing and not sitting on my couch, to be honest.”

Stewart is making his first start since joining Howie as a member of the Five Star Sports Agency run by Paul Lawrie. McDonald will be aiming to build on a promising finish to last season while Young improved his status through playing in all six rounds in the DP World Tour Q-School Final.

“I’ve played here before, so I know the course quite well,” said Howie. “It’s just a case of familiarising myself with some of the holes. It’s not over complicated; it’s just about reminding yourself of the shots you need to hit.”