McNicoll goes back to basics to rebuild his lost confidence

KEIR McNicoll, who played off plus six when he turned professional in 2008 and just missed the cut on his debut in the Dunhill Links Championship the same year, has put his playing career on hold after signing up to become a PGA trainee.

The 27-year-old from Carnoustie has become an assistant professional under Alasdair Good at Gullane, having decided that a change in direction was required after seeing his confidence drain away in three full years playing tournament golf.

He still aims to get back out on Tour one day but, for the time being, he has decided to get a qualification under his belt and is hoping the spell in a new environment can lead to a kick-start for his career.

“I’ve lost a hell of a lot of confidence and I couldn’t see myself continuing to play the way it was going,” said McNicoll, who made just one cut in ten starts on the third-tier PGA EuroPro Tour this year before failing to secure an Alps Tour card in recent weeks.

“I need to try and build my game back up to where it was before and I don’t think I would have been able to do that playing on the EuroPro Tour.

“The PGA training programme is good and it gives me a chance to learn about the game in a slightly different way. It’s great to be working for Alasdair Good and Gullane has the best pro shop in Britain as far as I’m concerned.”

McNicoll, whose dad, David, played football for Hearts, Dunfermline and St Johnstone, was a Scotland regular between 2006 and 2009, playing in four Home Internationals and two European Team Championships.

He reached the final of the 2007 Scottish Amateur Championship, losing the title showdown to John Gallagher at Prestwick, and won the St Andrews Links Trophy in 2008, a success that helped secure a place in the Great Britain & Ireland training squad for the following year’s Walker Cup.

After missing out on a place in the team to face the Americans at Merion, McNicoll, the first Scottish player to reach a plus six handicap, switched to the paid ranks and earned a sponsor’s invite to play in the Dunhill Links Championship, an event he’d caddied in for the two previous years.

He got off to a flying start with a four-under-par 68 on the Old Course and then added scores of 72 and 73 at Kingsbarns and Carnoustie, only to fall one shot short of earning a place in the final round at St Andrews. Since then, McNicoll has struggled to secure a foothold on any of the Tours and, though he has worked his socks off in a bid to keep his dream alive, he has now decided that a different plan of attack might provide the answer.

“It all happened quite fast,” he added. “I didn’t play too well this year and the head pro at Carnoustie mentioned in the off chance that there were trainee jobs going at Prestwick and Gullane, two of the best clubs in Scotland.

“When I went down to see Alasdair, I didn’t know what I was going to do, to be honest, but he caught me off guard by saying that he wanted to bring me in fairly quickly.

“I had a couple of weeks to think about it and, after missing out in the Alps Tour Qualifying School, I decided it was time to try and do things a different way.

“I’ve been working as hard on my game as I ever have but have not been getting anything out of it. I was still having some decent rounds, but I had lost consistency and self-belief, too.

“It has been a mix of things that have resulted in my loss of confidence. My putting left me in my last year as an amateur and that seeps through the rest of your game.”

McNicoll, who gained a degree in business administration during a spell at Lynn University in Florida, insisted he sees his decision to enter the four-year PGA training programme as a positive step rather than meaning the end of his playing career.

“Alasdair knows that I am still desperate to play down the line and, hopefully, I can represent Gullane in years to come,” he said.

“I will still get to play in Scotland. It’s almost a case of starting back at square one in a bid to try and build my game back up again.

“If can still get an hour or so to work on things at the end of a day, I might get more out of that than spending five hours on the range. It means that every single shot means something.

“There’s a good junior programme here and, hopefully, I can pass on my experience to the youngsters, both from being in college in America and also being part of the Scotland set up.”

McNicoll is the first high-profile Scottish amateur in recent years to enter the PGA training programme, though Peter Latimer, who earned a cap in last year’s Home Internationals, recently took up an assistant’s post at Felixstowe Ferry in Suffolk.

“It’s a new chapter in my career and it’s exciting for me,” he insisted.