Malaga airport in November is usually overloaded with Europe's "snow-birds" moving south to avoid the late autumn's inclement weather. The weekend before last the arrival carousels were circulating bigger golf bags than usual for this time of year bound for the "Costa Del Golf". The owners of these vast treasure chests of the latest in club technology were predominantly youthful characters strutting with the enthusiasm of schoolboys on a day excursion. The third and final stage of the European Tour School was being held at the San Roque and Sotogrande golf clubs some 120 kilometres west of Malaga. The term "school" may be somewhat misleading. This is where 168 golfers assemble as a last resort to earn the right to play on the tour in the new millennium. It is the point of no return, it is the place every one of them have been trying to avoid all year, some of them all their lives.
The upside, if the week is successful (35 out of the 168 get a "tour card", the winner after six rounds receives the vast sum of £10,000), is a chance to compete against Europe's best next year. The reality for most is yet another year on the Challenge Tour, back to the range for more tuition or facing up to the limitations of their talent and finding another career.
Getting to this final stage has been both a grueling ordeal and financial burden for about 500 initial entrants to stage one in England earlier in the year. The entrance fee of £880 is only the start of the outflow of money in this quest for a card.
These incumbents receive a stark schooling in the financial realities of playing golf professionally without a sponsor. Those who did not succeed at the first qualifying stage in England had the chance to compete again last month in north east Spain, a four-round event with less than a one per cent chance of qualifying for the final stage. Along with the stage qualifiers, those on the main tour who finished outside the top 115 and within the top 150 were accompanied by those who finished outside the top 15 on the Challenge Tour and under the top 50. Many of these players have undoubtedly gone through a tortuous but unsuccessful October at the final events of the year in order to avoid ending up here in southern Spain's Costa del Grief.
This is the coliseum of fallen heroes, of superstars gone astray and hopeful contenders for the spoils of a prospering European Tour.
There were three former Ryder Cup players; Paul Way, Stephen Richardson and our own Philip Walton (only Richardson made it). Another former Ryder star Joakim Haegmann tried his luck in the American school having lost his card over here, but he didn't make it either. Over a dozen past tournament winners were here and numerous long-term tour players who had fallen upon hard times: Roger Chapman, Malcolm Mackenzie and Wayne Westner to name but a few.
To win a tournament on the main tour is probably the ultimate objective for most average players. It could also turn out to be a curse. Having won a tournament you also win a lifetime privilege to enter the final stage of the tour school. This, in many cases, turns out not to be the coveted right that it at first appears.
Many players continue to enter the school when really their game is not up to serious competition. At what point in our lives do we realise that we are no longer semi-proficient in something that we once aspired to master?
I found myself at the side of one such veteran of golf this week. Peter Fowler from Australia played on the European Tour for 15 years. He won the BMW tournament in Germany in 1993. He won the Australian Open in 1983. He hoisted the World Cup with Wayne Grady, in painful irony, almost a decade ago to the week, just down the road in Las Brisas (he also won the individual prize).
He has made over £1 million on the European Tour and over $1 million on the Australian Tour. This week he was back as a mature student at the European Tour School. He has supported himself, his family and his golf habit over the recent lean years by playing the modest Australian Tour and giving lessons in Auckland, his home since 1996.
He could well be amongst a range of players who fall comfortably into the category of "has beens". Or is there life on the tour after 40?
Peter Fowler's long journey from the other side of the world was worthwhile. He finished tied 15th yesterday. There is no age limit to enter this coliseum of European golf. Requirements are talent, belief and resolve. Yesterday was the day that fading careers were revived and new ones born.
