To play for the sake of playing in changing amateur scene

The National

a day ago

What a prospect. An additional five years of grumbling, cursing, muttering futility? Joie de bloomin' vivre, eh?
This fascinating, flummoxing game, of course, remains a constant work in progress so perhaps a few more seasons spent clattering and thrashing away will finally lead to some sort of modest improvement? I very much doubt it.
Despite being mired in this seemingly perpetual state of ineptitude, rarely does a week go by without me actually learning something new about my own golf.
That means I was ignorant of about four things over the past month. Extend that process back over, say, 30 years, and that's a mightily impressive accumulation of complete and utter ignorance.
They do say, of course, that ignorance is bliss. Well, that's what my playing partners sympathetically inform me after they've watched one of my tee-shots and chorus, 'where the hell did that go?'
Anyway, we're rambling here. Which is not unusual in this column. Wandering through the grounds of Hampden Park the other day – nurse, I've gone from rambling to aimlessly wandering - I gave a passing nod to the old motto of Queen's Park fitba club, Ludere Causa Ludendi.
'Is that not the combative Italian midfielder Rangers have had their eye on?,' chirped the sports editor.
Those of you who are well-versed in Latin will know that it means, 'to play for the sake of playing'.
This maxim reflected the club's long-standing commitment to amateurism and the Corinthian ideal. Of course, the Spiders are a professional outfit now so that's gone out of the window. Rather like their finances.
In the upper echelons of the amateur scene in golf, meanwhile, I was reminded of the changing face of the unpaid game recently when doing some work at the Women's Amateur Championship in Nairn.
In an international field, which started with a line-up of 144 players and was whittled down to two finalists over the course of six days, the oldest player was Scotland's Jennifer Saxton. She was, wait for it, a venerable 28.
If Saxton was considered the veteran in the draw, then it made this increasingly decrepit correspondent feel as ancient as the standing stones of Callanish.
In an event packed, by and large, with full-time players who will, no doubt, have ambitions of turning professional, Saxton stood as a monument to the increasingly rare breed that is the career amateur.
'We all joke about it, but I sit at my desk every day at work then try to come out and compete with these young guns,' said Saxton, who can certainly still cut it at the top-level and proved it with victory in the prestigious St Rule Trophy a couple of seasons ago. To play for the sake of playing and all that.
Back in 1981, the celebrated, decorated Belle Robertson won the Women's Amateur Championship title at the age of 45. A feat like that at such a vintage is unlikely to ever be repeated. Those, of course, were different golfing times.
These days, the career amateur is something that's almost as charmingly antiquated as a thatched roof, as players hurtle off into the professional game on a rapidly birling conveyor belt.
Saxton, a marketing manager with golf technology firm, Shot Scope, is well aware that she's in the minority.
'I wish more people would do the same,' she said of juggling the nine-to-five with the competitive cut-and-thrust. 'It would be good for the game if people were working in golf and trying to compete as well.
'My golf started getting better when I worked. Golf is a breakaway from that. I learned how to score without putting in the hours of practice.'
The proof remains in the pudding. Yesterday, Saxton was named in the Scotland side again as she retained her place for the forthcoming European Women's Amateur Team Championship.
She will be joined in that squad by Hannah Darling, the highly talented 21-year-old who is poised for her amateur swansong before making the pro plunge later in the season.
Darling, who helped GB&I win the Vagliano Trophy for the first time in 20 years at the weekend, has stockpiled a vast haul of national and international silverware since bursting onto the scene and landing the Scottish Girls' Amateur Championship at the age of just 13.
Amateur accomplishments and accolades, of course, do not guarantee professional prosperity. But nothing does in this predictably unpredictable pursuit of complex demands.
Paul Lawrie, for instance, had very little amateur pedigree but, through drive, discipline, talent and that special undefined something that you can't bottle, became a major champion, multiple tour winner and Ryder Cup player.
Others, eagerly championed and tipped for great things after glory-laden stints in the amateur ranks, disappeared off the face of the earth.
There's no one-size-fits-all model for success and someone like Lawrie, as well as Scots like Catriona Mathew, Janice Moodie, Colin Montgomerie, Sam Torrance, Sandy Lyle, Russell Knox, Martin Laird, Gemma Dryburgh or Robert MacIntyre, were and have been successful for very different reasons.
Darling has ticked plenty of boxes along the way. Let's hope she ticks a few more when her inevitable move into the paid game arrives.
Let's hope, too, that Saxton continues to thrive as a career amateur. And as for this correspondent?
Well, let's hope that scientific research is right and I winkle out a few extra years on this earth, even if it merely prolongs the golfing incompetence.
Ludere Causa Ludendi, indeed.