Amateur golden boys shine again after dark days

PATIENCE. It’s as key an element of golfing success as a booming drive and a dead-eye putting stroke.

So it was nice to see it paying off in two heartwarming cases on either side of the Atlantic.

Over here, Scotland is celebrating the arrival of a new kid on the big stage after Blairgowrie boy Bradley Neil won his European Tour card.

A gutsy finish to the last Challenge Tour event of the season saw him grab the 15th and last ticket to the big time.

There have been high hopes for Neil ever since he won the 2014 Amateur Championship, earning him a place in The Open and Masters fields. But the glamour of those experiences have long since faded into the harsh reality of life in the unforgiving pro ranks.

Making just one cut in his first season on the Challenge Tour, the 21-year-old found it hard going again last year.

It’s at times like that when a player’s faith is tested and in those darker moments he must have secretly wondered if he would ever be able to live up to his promise.

Thankfully, he had inspiration to draw upon in his stablemate Justin Rose who shares the same management team, Excel Sports.

Rose is the man in red-hot form, having just won the WGC event in Shanghai and Sunday’s Turkish Open. But he took time out to praise Neil’s “ballsy” last round at the NBO Golf Classic Grand Final in Oman.

High praise indeed from a Major-winning Ryder Cup superstar who knows exactly what Neil must have gone through.

Rose is the guy who missed 21 consecutive cuts after turning pro in a frenzy of publicity whipped up by his 1998 Open performance, finishing fourth while playing as an amateur.

Like Neil, he had to put immense faith in himself, always believing if he stuck to his plan it would all work out. So it proved, with a US Open title and Olympic gold medal in his cabinet.

Hopefully so too it can for Neil. Yet the young Scot wasn’t the best story of long-awaited triumph in the face of adversity to emerge at the weekend.

When the American Walker Cup team came to Royal Aberdeen in 2011 one young man was hailed as the rising star.

Rated even higher than team-mates Jordan Spieth, Harris English, Kelly Kraft and Peter Uihlein, the world appeared to be at the feet of Patrick Cantlay.

During a record spell of 55 weeks at the top of the world amateur golf rankings, Cantlay finished tied 21st at the 2011 US Open and recorded the lowest ever round by an amateur on the PGA Tour when he shot 60 at TPC River Highlands.

Plagued by back problems, he was then restricted to just six

Neil must have secretly wondered if he’d live up to his promise

starts in three years. But the pain in his spine was nothing compared to the ache in his heart when tragedy struck last year.

Watching in horror as his best friend and caddie Chris Roth was killed by a hit-and-run driver, he insists there is not a day goes by that he doesn’t think of that night.

His friend would have proud of the way he has battled back both from injury and the lingering emotional trauma.

Never more so than on Sunday when Cantlay knocked off his first PGA Tour title at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in Las Vegas.

Cantlay said: “I don’t really associate the two together (the injury and the death of his friend).

“I would say I’m better because of both, as tough as those moments were.”