Spare a thought for the guys with careers at stake

It’s that time of the golf season when attention turns to the fight for survival on the European Tour.

Careers and futures are at stake in this afternoon’s final round of the Portugal Masters, and then next week at the last full-field event in Australia.

There’s an eerie atmosphere at these tournaments. All the talk in the locker room is about who’s going to keep their card and who isn’t.

The number of full cards has been squeezed this year to 110, so anyone between 105 and 120 on the money list will be feeling the heat. The calculators will be out and players will know the exact scenarios for each position they could finish.

And there’s certainly more pressure in trying to retain your card than winning a tournament. Confidence has been low all season and you’re almost waiting for that bad shot to arrive. Somehow, you have to raise your game and overcome the nerves, and it’s so difficult to break out of that negative mindset.

Tom Lewis was in this position before the recent Dunhill Links. He had won in Portugal on only his third start as a pro in 2011, and great things were suddenly expected of him. But that two-year exemption for winning was about to run out and he was way down in 155th in the Race to Dubai. Somehow, he found his best golf in Scotland, and he had a putt on the last green at St Andrews to tie for third and keep his card.

I was feeling tense watching him on TV, so you can only imagine how he’ll have felt. At 22, Tom’s whole career was on the line but he made that putt.

Having to go to Tour School or drop down onto the Challenge Tour is so demoralising for a player. It’s almost like going back to square one. The prize money is less, and low-key tournaments are staged in places like Ukraine and Kazakhstan, where golf is only developing as a sport. It’s a tough ordeal, especially if you’ve sampled the high life on the main Tour.

And you’re often competing against guys on the way up who are brim full of confidence.

There have been plenty of examples of players who lost their way and never made it back up.

Paul Way burst onto the scene in the 1980s and played spectacularly in two Ryder Cups, but when his golf went south, he never recovered. In more recent times, Oliver Wilson and Nick Dougherty have dropped onto the Challenge Tour and are finding it extremely tough. Oliver played in the 2008 Ryder Cup at Valhalla, while Nick is a multiple winner, but that counts for nothing in such a harsh environment.

So, spare a thought for the players who face the long and miserable flight home from Perth next weekend, having failed to keep their card.