Philip Walton is discovering that the route back to exempt status on the European Tour may be a lot more difficult than he imagined. From a total of 23 requests for sponsors' invitations into tournaments this season, the 1995 Ryder Cup hero had received only one favourable reply up to last weekend.
"Obviously it's disappointing," he said yesterday. "I can only conclude that there must be a lot of other guys in the same boat."
The one response so far is for the Qatar Masters on March 9th to 12th. Ideally, Walton would like to have got back into tournament action in the Portuguese Open, starting a week on Thursday, but they have declined him an invitation. "I was hoping for about 15 invitations in all, apart from the English Open and the French Open which I get into automatically as a former winner," he added.
His desire to resume as quickly as possible, has been fired by a feeling of well-being after undergoing laser surgery on his eyes before Christmas. He claims that the operation, carried out in San Diego, California, has been an unqualified success.
"Now I find that everything is sharper and brighter. And it has certainly improved my putting," he said.
Though he was a total of 90 minutes' in the San Diego clinic, the operation lasted only seven minutes. It is the same LASIK surgery which Tiger Woods underwent last October, though Walton understands that the procedure for the world number one was of a relatively minor nature.
Woods, who underwent the surgery last October 1st, during a four-week break following the Ryder Cup, proceeded to win five successive events between then and the end of the year. Previously, he had worn contact lenses since he was 12 but they caused him problems, especially on blustery days.
Significantly, he also had difficulty in gauging long putts, which is a problem which plagued Walton in recent seasons. Now, he claims to have a much clearer view of what he's doing. In the aftermath of the surgery, Woods said: "Objects are bigger. The hole is bigger. So is the ball. Even my clubs are bigger."
A measure of the decline in Walton's putting can be gauged from the fact that even the broomhandle eventually became an unreliable solution. And this was the player who, when Ireland captured the European Amateur Team Championship at Chantilly in 1983, was inspirational in transforming Garth McGimpsey's putting problems.
Regarding his European Tour situation, he said: "I honestly thought I would have no problem in lining up invitations and if things don't improve before the end of this week, I'll have to start making phone calls. It's not the sort of situation where I can afford to sit around and wait for things to happen."
Ideally, he would like to play at least 20 tournaments this season, but he believes that he should be able to earn sufficient money in 15 events to secure his card, provided he plays up to a reasonable standard. The only two certainties, however, are the French Open on May 4th to 7th and the English Open a month later.
Still, one assumes he can also bank on a sponsor's invitation from Murphy's into the Irish Open at Ballybunion on June 29th to July 2nd and on getting into the Smurfit European Open a week later. Interestingly, his first playing rights on the European Tour were gained from sharing 26th place behind Seve Ballesteros in the Irish Open at Royal Dublin in August 1983. Over the years, it has been widely accepted that any player who has made a significant contribution to the European Tour, will not be forgotten in his hour of need. And Walton has certainly paid his dues, quite apart from his three tournament victories (his third was in the Catalan Open in 1995).
By beating Jay Haas in the Ryder Cup at Oak Hill in 1995, he delivered a winning point which has since had an incalculable impact on European Tour coffers. It is certainly reasonable to suggest that income accruing to European interests would have been appreciably less, had Walton lost to Haas, so giving the Americans their third successive victory in the biennial showpiece.
When Christy O'Connor Jnr slumped to 138th in the Order of Merit at the end of the 1994 season, he remained exempt for 1995 through his position in the top-40 of the career money list. From then on, however, he depended on sponsors' invitations and got into 11 tournaments, including the Volvo PGA Championship, during the first six months of the following year.
O'Connor was then hit by an injury to his left elbow. But he returned to get 14 sponsors' invitations in 1997 and eight in 1998. Much of those had to do with intervention from Tour headquarters, which the Galwayman richly deserved. And one would like to think that the same would apply to his compatriot from Malahide.
