LAWRENCE DONEGANtraces the long and eventful journey Gary Christian took on his way to the US Tour

A LOT has been said and written about the luxury life on the US PGA Tour but none of it strikes a truer note than the words of Gary Christian as he walks down Pebble Beach’s famous 18th hole: “It sure beats selling knives.”

It sure does. Behind Christian, the Pacific Ocean crashes into the rocks of the Monterey coast. Ahead of him stretches a world of possibility. “It sounds a little bit daft, but I truly feel that I am being preserved for something really good,” he says. “I get right to the point where it seems that I might be at the end of the rope and then something good happens.”

Given the peripatetic career of the 40-year-old Englishman, it is hard to deny him his spiritual optimism. He has been to the brink more times than Tom Cruise in Mission Impossible, finding himself on the edge of giving up his dream only to snatch “something really good” from something really not so good.

He has been an average club player, a pensions administrator. He has been the “English kid dressed like a hobo” and lived part-time in a van. He has sold golf club memberships and been at the bottom of a pyramid scheme selling high-end cutlery – “They thought I’d be good at it because I was in golf and knew people who might spend $600 on a set of kitchen knives.”

And now he is a US PGA Tour player, one of 25 who graduated into the biggest league at the end of last season. That meant Pebble Beach last week and the Riviera club for the Northern Trust Open this week. It means courtesy cars and players’ lounges and walking on to the practice ground with Tiger and Phil. A month into the 2012 season he had played in four events, making three cuts and winning more than $122,000 (€93,000).

Look at Surrey-born Christian, with his average build and everyman personality, and the impossible seems strangely possible. If he can make it on the US PGA Tour, you think, then so can I.

“I didn’t really take up golf properly until I was 15, though when I did I got good fairly quickly. I was a scratch golfer but that was it – nothing special, just about good enough to play at county level,” he says. “Back then, if you were a really good amateur golfer you were taken care of by the English Golf Union. That meant winter training trips to Spain, specialised coaching and so on. That wasn’t me. I didn’t have a lesson until I was 26.”

What Christian did have was supportive parents who helped him financially as much as they could, and a terrible job sifting through paperwork in the south London offices of a pension company. The incentive to escape was strong. Unfortunately he could play only a couple of times a week, which was hardly conducive to developing his game.

“I couldn’t even get into the British Amateur because my handicap wasn’t low enough. But whenever I did play better players I would look at them and think they weren’t that much better than I was. Maybe their swings were prettier and they had better equipment, but I had more heart than they did.”

When the chance to play in a small “trial” tournament in Florida came along, his parents stumped up the money. A few coaches from some smaller US colleges were there to scout talent and Christian did enough to be offered an academic scholarship at a small college in Alabama.

“When I got to America the first time I had an old persimmon driver and a three-wood with plaster round the hosel of the club. I had rubber golf shoes with flaps. People must have looked at me and thought: ‘Who on earth is the scrawny English kid’? But I got out there and I beat every single one of them,” he recalls. “I found out that I loved playing golf as the underdog. That’s what has sustained me all this time.”

Two years and some good play later he was offered a scholarship to Auburn, one of the bigger colleges in the state. He spent two years there, improving his game. “In college I learned to play well and score well despite having horrible technique. Honestly, there was nothing right about my swing but I thought if I can have this success with what I had, then maybe I could do something even better if I eventually got some good technique.”

Whatever optimism Christian had faded as his college career came to an end and reality dawned. He was a decent player but he was nowhere near good enough to turn professional. “I remember waking up one morning and thinking: ‘Well, that is it – time to go home to England and find a horrible job again’.”

Again, fate interjected in the shape of an American family who had taken a liking to the scrappy English kid. They offered to help finance his efforts to pursue a career in the game, as long as he got a job. “I picked up the paper and there it was – selling knives, $11.88 an hour. I thought to myself: ‘Ill have some of that’.”

Fast forward another two years and another job, this time as the membership director of a local golf club, and Christian finally turned pro and hit the big time – the Teardrop Tour in the Carolinas. “Believe it or not that tour is actually a big deal down in the south. The standard is pretty good and yet I won four events in my first season. I had won at every level I’d played in but that convinced me I could have a pretty decent career as a professional.”

It goes without saying the gulf between the Teardrop Tour and the US PGA Tour is wide. Still, Christian bridged the divide as he has done most things in his career; slowly and with a cussed determination. Like a million other hopefuls through the years, he tried and failed to make it through qualifying school.

Unlike most of them, he kept trying. And trying. And trying.

“I slept in a van, I shared rooms in grotty hotels with friends, I just lived cheap,” he says. “I’m sure people were looking at me and thinking why does he bother. But I just kept my head down. I don’t play for notoriety or money – I couldn’t care less about money – I just play because I enjoy it and want to see how good I can be.”

Truly, the boy has become a man. But if the scenery and the rewards have changed, Gary Christian has not changed at all. The scrawny kid is still inside, standing side by side with the underdog and the dreamer. “I’m 40 years old now and I know I might not get many chances at this so I’m determined not to blow it. I know this sounds crazy coming from a guy who was on the Dakotas Tour six or seven years ago, but let’s see how far I can take it.

“The Open Championship – why not? If I can get in the tournament and play in it a few times, you just never know. Anything is possible.”

It is. Christian need only look in the mirror to find proof of that.