BY SEÁN HOLLAND
JOHN Murphy’s rise to the top of elite professional golf had been a smooth journey up until 2023.
His outstanding achievements to date have been well documented, but this season brought its challenges, as the Kinsale golfer lost his DP World Tour card following his rookie season.
Ever the optimist, Murphy is using the disappointment he experienced in his first year on tour as motivation as he strives for success in 2024.
‘Obviously, not the year I anticipated or hoped for,’ he said,
‘Golf is a strange game, it’s full of highs and lows. Golf is different to a lot of other sports. Like Brooks Koepka said, if you win two percent of the time you tee it up, you’re a hall of famer. You have to make the most of every scenario and every situation and learn from it.’
Having qualified from Q-school and gaining his Tour card in late November 2022, it was a quick turnaround for Murphy. It had been a constant upward trajectory in his career to that point and he had high expectations for 2023. As he describes, it’s one of the major lessons he learned from his first year on Tour.
‘I was a bit naive coming into this year,’ Murphy admitted.
‘I was kind of thinking to myself, I’ll aim for the top 20 in the rankings. It didn’t even dawn on me that I could lose my card in my first year. The DP Tour is different from the Challenge Tour in that everything is set up a little bit differently. The greens are faster and the pins are tucked in the corners.
‘When I got through Q-school last season, I was kind of thinking to myself, I don’t need to change anything. To keep everything the same fundamentally.
‘The one thing I wish I did was take a bit of time off after Q-school. Go back to my maintenance work and go back to my building blocks. I didn’t even have an off-season, I came back home for Christmas but I was out again in January. It’s definitely a lesson that I learned to just give yourself that time off to reset and focus,’ he noted.
Murphy began his DP World Tour journey in Asia, where he failed to make a cut in seven events. It was a baptism of fire for the Kinsale man but he felt that when he got back to Europe things would change, that there would be one week where it all clicked. Unfortunately, that week always eluded him.
With golf being such a mental game, a run of poor results can take its toll on the player and more so, the person. Murphy alluded to the break he took during the year. He pinpointed the moment during the season when he had to step away from the game to rekindle his love and hunger for the sport.
‘I had played poorly in Germany and the week after was the British Masters which wasn’t great either and then we got to Denmark. I actually felt like the first 25/26 holes of the tournament I was playing really well. I was hitting the ball well, I was rolling putts well, but I just wasn’t moving anywhere. As much as I try not to think about my score, I was looking at it and I was saying to myself how am I so far behind?,’ he said.
‘I had one poor hole that pretty much ended my chances of making the cut and I said to Shane (his caddie), “I’m not enjoying this in the slightest”. I didn’t want to be there.
‘I was due to play two more events in America but I couldn’t think of anything worse than getting on a flight to play a round of golf. I just decided to leave the clubs in the suitcase and take a bit of time off. Ideally, I would have loved a bit more time off.’
Like the hurler on the ditch or the golfer in the gallery in this case, it’s easy as bystanders to ask: why can’t golfers just perform to their ability week in and week out on a consistent basis? It’s just not that easy. There’s no doubting Murphy’s talent, but like anything in life, if you’re not enjoying what you’re doing, it’s tough to succeed.
‘Golf is a weird one where you get to a certain level and there’s only so much hard work will do for you,’ he said.
‘You look at the best players in the world, they’re not going to be out on the range for four or five hours the day before the tournament. They’re not fighting their golf swings. For them, it’s just about getting prepped. It’s all about being smart with what you do.
‘The best way to step forward was to take a step back. I took a few weeks off. I didn’t touch a club. I didn’t really do anything golf-related. I was very happy to spend a bit of time with my friends and my family. That’s something I did learn in the last year that taking a step back is really taking a step forward.’
Looking to next year, Murphy will once again compete on the Challenge Tour. He’s only 25 but he’s another year older, and wiser, and he’s learned some important lessons this year that will be invaluable to him in the years to come.
