Martin Dempster: Careless mistakes let down Saltman

Yet costly mistakes mixed in with those fireworks sum up why the Scot, rightly regarded as one of our brightest talents since he won the Silver Medal as leading amateur in the 2005 Open Championship at St Andrews, will bring down the curtain on his rookie year on the European Tour back at the dreaded Qualifying School.

In short, Saltman has been squandering his good work, finishing just one-under and outside the top 40 in the Dunhill event at Leopard Creek, then having to settle for a share of ninth at the weekend, when his closing two rounds at Serengeti included no fewer than six 6s, two of them resulting in double-bogeys and one a triple-bogey.

They cost him a chunky cheque as well as a place in this week’s Hong Kong Open, leaving the 26-year-old to head home instead to first lick his wounds and then get himself ready for the final stage – phase two gets under way this Friday – of the Qualifying School in Girona on Saturday week.

Saltman isn’t the first amateur star to make a stuttering start to their professional career and he certainly won’t be the last. It will be galling, though, for the Scot to find himself back at square one at the same time as some of his former Walker Cup colleagues – Rory McIlroy, Richie Ramsay, David Horsey and Rhys Davies – will all be competing in the season-ending Dubai World Championship.

McIlroy may be on a different level to the majority of his former amateur compatriots these days, but, along with many others, I still believe that Saltman, a prolific winner before he turned professional, also has the talent to climb all the way to the top in this game.

He certainly has all the attributes to be successful in the modern-day professional game. He hits the ball a mile, doesn’t lack confidence and, as those statistics show, makes plenty of eagles and birdies. What Saltman has lost from his artillery at the moment is the knack of finishing the job off.

In the 17 cuts he made this season – an improvement in percentage terms from the Challenge Tour in 2010 – he only managed to break 70 once in the final round and that sort of scoring is only going to guarantee a downward move on leaderboards at the highest level.

Take Saltman’s season compared to that of Oliver Fisher, one of his team-mates in the 2005 Walker Cup in Chicago. The Scot has performed better than the Englishman in almost every category, including a stroke average of 71.57 compared to 73.06, yet Fisher delivered one exceptional display, winning the Czech Open, to find himself currently sitting nearly 40 spots above Saltman on the money-list.

“It’s a strange one because I think Lloyd has made big strides this year,” said Colin Brooks, his long-time coach. “In the middle of the year, it looked as though he was going to walk his Tour card for another season, but then he was knocked for six after hurting his back as he drove up and down to Inverness for the Scottish Open.

“That put him out of action for a month, he then suffered some blows by not getting into events like the Dunhill Links and, though he started to play well again towards the end of the season, the last couple of weeks have summed up things, with the sting in the tail being that he is now heading back to the Tour School. He’s just not taken his chances when they’ve come along, but he’s got nothing to fear back at the Qualifying School because he knows he has the game to compete on the European Tour and there are plenty of people out there who also believe he has that ability.

“He is very disappointed at the moment, but Lloyd is someone who will always try and take positives from situations and there is certainly nothing to panic about.

“It’s not a case of him having to re-model his swing or anything like that. We will sit down together at the end of the year and see what tweak is needed here or there to try and ensure he’s not in the same position this time next season.”

Scottish golf needs the likes of Saltman and Steven O’Hara, who led at the halfway stage in the South African Open before seeing his brave bid to avoid a trip to the Qualifying School peter out in the final two rounds, amongst its European Tour contingent as they undoubtedly have the talent to compete at that level.

The same goes for Alastair Forsyth, a two-time winner on the circuit, yet all three of them now find themselves in a position where their immediate futures are going to come down to a pressure-packed six rounds in which dreams can certainly come true or be resurrected but, just as easily, lead to a nightmare stage in young careers.

Let’s hope this tale has a happy ending in just over a fortnight’s time.