Too many Journeyman Pro's?

Journalist Graham Spiers has brought up this point in his blog for the Golf Show on BBC Radio Scotland. Namely; Are there too many 'Journeyman' Golf professionals, making a comfortable living without really competing at the business end of any tournaments?

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/golf/18108832

Almost certainly the answer is yes. Spiers goes onto namecheck a couple of Scots who have been making a good living from golf without really winning too many events; Stephen Gallagher & Scott Jamieson, but you could add to that list probably another dozen or so names who play on tour but rarely compete.

However, forgive me for picking out Scots as guilty parties here, players from all nations are in the same boat and I'm sure most who were confronted would say the old sporting cliche 'Don't hate the player, hate the game' - i.e. why criticise someone for making good from a flawed system.

What solutions are there?

Well the 1st & most obvious answer that springs to mind would be to cut the number of players in  tournaments - say down to 50 or so, perhaps with another 5 or so invites to local players, or for sponsors. 55 guys, no cut. Most tournaments will have an entry list of 125 to 140 players at present.

Would that work? Well I'm sure dozens of 'journeyman pro's' would lose most of their income stream overnight as they would struggle even to get into tournaments. Many I'm sure would not stay on tour & probably all golfers would play fewer events. However, more than a few just might get a bit of a boot they need to pick up their game and get better results. I'm sure I remember English Golfer Paul Casey talking of the mentality of 'there's always next week' - meaning that quite early in a tournament, you may realise you won't be competing and immediately start thinking of making a better start in the next event.

However, probably having fields of only 50 would rob most younger players of a chance to gain much experience playing in the bigger tournaments as places would be at such a premium & they would inevitably take most of them years, rather than months to get half a dozen events under their belt.

I suppose another solution would be to keep tournaments in the same format, but only to dish out prize money to the top 25 or so (rather than all players who make the cut). Most players would still comfortably afford to play with sponsors generally covering their costs but it would make it much more important for lower ranked players who make the cut to score well in the weekend to try & get paid. Although you could also argue that guys giving up 4 whole days to play in an event, deserve to get some cash. It would be absurd if your boss asked you to give up 4 days of your time for a project with perhaps no money at the end even with limited success (no matter how well paid you were the rest of the year).

So it seems we are struggling with solutions to the curse of the Journeyman pro. I guess golf is just such a lucrative sport that even guys who are 200 or 300 in the world will still make good money. Probably thousands of footballers around the world make a good living despite playing at a modest level (some may not even play at all) and simply because there is no clear ranking - it goes relatively unnoted.

The format is also very inclusive as most tournaments will have local qualifying events, sponsors exemptions and dozens of other ways to qualify and it must give tremendous hope to guys on the fringes of the game who are only ever 3 or 4 good rounds away from a big pay day and entrance to other events.

It seems that as long as there is so much money in the sport, there will always be Journeyman pro's making a good living for anything from 2 to 20 years without really bothering too many engravers over the years.