So what is it about a professional golfer that you notice first? Is it their smooth swings that launch the ball effortlessly down the centre of the fairway? Is it the phenomenal clubhead speed they generate when they do decide to hit the ball hard, leaving less a divot as a scorch mark? Is it the touch and soft hands they show executing escape shots that we wouldn’t dare to? Or are they just good golfers that got a lucky break?

The truth is, watching a professional competition close up and in the flesh is a humbling experience. These guys are just like you and me in every way (except probably in better shape and annoyingly better looking) and yet they regularly play the sort of golf shots that would have us screaming ‘Did you see that! DID YOU SEE THAT!’ at our playing partners. From the booming drive to the chip knocked stiff, this is bread and butter to the professional golfer.

Standing at the practise tee you can see players warming up, trying new or different equipment and practising the shots that they might need on the course. Warm ups are a series of perfect half and three-quarter irons, clipping the (brand new premium quality) ball off the turf. Not quite the machine-gunning of range rocks off astroturf that you see every day at your local range. Full shots suddenly show you why they are the best of the best. The trajectory a properly struck ball takes is an eye opener. The ball fires off the club face with a startling low trajectory but with so much spin it seems to fly like a small spherical frisbee, boring through the air into the distance.

The distance control is just as impressive. I watched someone that plays on both the US and European tours and is known for the accuracy of his iron play. Taking aim at a practise green 150 yards away, of the 10 shots he hit the furthest went 151 yards, the shortest went 147. Most were bang on the money and I would have taken every one if I had been playing.

While they stretch their limbs and send these shots lancing down the range, equipment reps try to tempt them with the very latest and greatest equipment. Lovingly built to their own exacting specifications, these clubs are of the sort that you and I will either never see in our local proshops or could never afford. To the equipment junkies among us, this may be the most heartbreaking things a grown man can witness – ‘You’d like this driver tipped? Why certainly. Just give me one moment to rip out and throw away this 1000 dollar shaft and put in a new one’. After all this effort, the pro might give it a couple of swishes and then turn it down! Frankly, I admire anybody that has the self-discipline to turn down a free pen let alone a free golf club. I’m fairly sure that  if I were a in their (ergonomic and highly branded) shoes, I would be living in a house where clambering over golf clubs would be the only way to move from room to room and opening cupboards would be done at your own peril.

Out on the course, the difference between us and them is only more obvious. All of us know guys who can smash the ball 300+ yards from the tee box, but how many of them can do that into a landing area 15 yards wide with trouble either side. The iron shots are either low fizzers avoiding the wind or high floating shots that land softly and cuddle up to the hole, wafting left or right through the air. Pitches and chips are almost always knocked inside the leather. Not so much par saves as genuine attempts to get the ball in the hole from a distance that you and I would regard as ridiculous.

Then there’s the putting. Putting is a great leveller in golf. Providing you can grip a putter, there are no other physical attributes (apart from having at least one eye) that will help you get the ball into the hole. Looking at the sort of greens the pros have to putt on would give most of us the heebie-jeebies. The flat expanses that we are used to are replaced with tiered and sloping greens that would give anyone pause for thought. Then there’s the speed of the greens. Putts that would have barely travelled halfway on normal courses skate past the hole.

To give you an idea of how fast they are, I have to tell you a story of one of my friends who moonlights as an equipment rep for a putter company. He got a little carried away the first time he was on the practise green. Attempting to impress the surrounding pros with a cheeky little 6 footer he promptly managed to putt the ball 15 yards, clean off the practise green and much to the amusement of all. ‘Like putting on lino’ was how he described it.

Of course there’s also you and I and all our friends in the gallery. It can be nerve racking teeing up for the monthly medal when the only audience is the fourball due off after you and the starter. How much more nerve racking must it be to tee off in front of a gallery of hundreds, with television cameras (who may be broadcasting to millions) everywhere just in case you do top/shank/fat/thin/whiff it, when you are playing for your livelihood?

And not just the first tee either. For a player how is having a good round, word gets out and his gallery suddenly swells. Rather than playing in front of merely several dozen people, hundreds now stand watch over every move. This all comes to a climax at the 18^th where huge grandstands of yet more hundreds watch those all important final shots that change a good round to a great one. What sort of mental strength is required to shut out the watching gallery, the millions that might be watching at home, the expectations of sponsors and your family and friends when you stand over a breaking 5 footer that if holed, wins you a championship or even possibly a major.

All this in competition with your fellow professionals, fighting to get the best score possible for the victory, the money, the ranking points. They are a breed apart.

‘Could I ever be a professional golfer?’ is a question that everyone who has ever picked up a golf club has asked themselves. The answer, unfortunately for all but a tiny minority, is no.

Would I want to be one?

Yes please.