IN THE END, it was all rather abrupt — no deliberation, no second thoughts, no regrets — but, deep down, Peter Lawrie had known for some time the flame was beginning to flicker.
The will to play on simply wasn’t there and life on tour was no longer what it was. The game had moved on, developed and changed, and there came a point when Lawrie realised it was time he moved on too.
The nomadic existence, the weeks and months spent away from home and family, and the perpetual battle to justify it all wasn’t what he wanted anymore. Enough was enough.
“I was on a train track and I couldn’t get off it and no matter what I did the end was in sight,” he tells The42. “Did golf give me up or did I give up on it? I think it was a bit of both, to be honest.”
Lawrie officially turned his back on professional golf last September, but the beginning of the end can be traced back to November 2015. It was at that stage, as he returned to Qualifying School in Catalunya, when he began to question it and the doubts started to reverberate.
“You look back on it,” he continues. “You’re 42 years of age and can you just picture yourself going back into Sixth Year in school to do your Leaving Cert again. I would say that would horrify a lot of people and that’s exactly what it was like.
“I was going back mixing with young lads who were trying to come up on tour. It’s actually funny as I probably looked at older lads when I came out as a young guy, thinking ‘what are these lads still doing out here, they’re way past their prime’ and that was me in that situation.”
It was the lowest point of his career and Lawrie’s performance that week hinted that his desire was beginning to fade as a nightmare situation was compounded after an incorrect drop from a staked tree.
He refused to sign his card and was automatically disqualified, a decision he knew would end his hopes of regaining his full playing rights for 2016.
“I won’t give up,” he said at the time, but Lawrie knew. He knew there wasn’t much more he could give to a game, and lifestyle, which had changed dramatically in the two decades he had been on tour.
Ten starts sprinkled throughout 2016 failed to yield much return and financially it was no longer viable for him to chase one final payday whilst leaving his wife at home with four young kids.
“I would always weigh up the situation of walking out the door and leaving them behind. Was it worth my while?” he said.
“Not just in terms of me being competitive but also in a monetary nature and when that wasn’t stacking up, when I was walking out the door and leaving my family behind and not earning a decent wage and then struggling and losing a bit at the end, it was time to call it a day.
“It’s a hard thing to do, to look at your career and accept it’s time to move on. I just needed to tell myself that I’d had a good career but now I need to stop and do something else. If I kept chasing it I would be talked about as one of those players who was good but now can’t hit snow off a rope.”
His last shot in professional golf was at the KLM Open on 9 September 2016, as he carded rounds of 76 and 77 to finish 149th out of 156 entries. He had hoped for a final swansong at the Dunhill Links or in Portugal but a sponsor’s invite never came.
“You just have to look at how long they hit it now, and their physiques,” he says. “Golf has changed so dramatically to a power sport rather than a master craftsman getting the ball around the golf course.
“Golf moved on to a certain extent because the golf courses I could contend at were short and tight and now they play courses that are mainly wide open, long and with plenty of rough.”
Lawrie hadn’t so much fallen out of love with golf — the game is all he’s ever known and wanted to play — but had become tired and disillusioned by everything that goes around it; the airports, the travel, the hotels, the endless pursuit of ranking points and the pressure to come home from far-flung places with something to show for it all.
“It just got tiresome after a while, I had done enough of it.” he admits. “Twenty years as a pro, 15 of them were on the European Tour and the other five were pretty much going around the world chasing a card. It was enough, I had done enough.
The hardest part was probably in the evening time, you’ve finished your dinner and there’s nobody around you. You’re talking to the kids on the phone: ‘How are you today, what did you get up to today Daddy?’ and you say to yourself really I should be at home. That was the hardest part more than anything else.
“You’re trying to get home on a Sunday night or a Friday night when you’ve missed the cut as quickly as you can to see the kids. They need their Dad, especially my son more than anything. The youngest is five, then seven, nine and 11.”
Now, Lawrie gets to spend a lot more time at home after taking up the role of director of golf at Luttrellstown Castle Golf Club, with the commute for his new day job taking just five minutes.
Life has moved onto the next chapter.
Lawrie is just about coming to terms with that, and beginning to accept the way a career which garnered one European Tour win, at the Spanish Open in 2008, came to a halt earlier than he would have liked. He still questions if he made the right decision, but insists he just has to park that period in his life and look forward.
“The 19 September 2016 is a date which will be etched in my brain forever,” he explains. “I still wonder have I made the right decision. I’m watching and thinking I could still be out there but there’s a day and a day when things move on and that’s life.
“Dealing with the fact that I’m not playing anymore has been the hard part. Watching the television or watching the scores on the internet, the lure is still there. I suppose it’s a bit like being a gambler, golf was like that, it was the thrill of the next big win. That’s been tough to push aside.
You have to move on and when you’re in that situation, just accept it’s time and let someone else in the door. I have no regrets because that would kill you. I made that decision and you have to get on with it. I’ve closed one chapter and opened up another.”
Fresh pastures, but Lawrie can look back on his time at the top with great pride and satisfaction. The ultimate professional, who earned the respect of his peers through sheer hard work, perseverance and an unflinching passion for the game, the Dubliner was one of the most consistent performers on tour. He kept his card for 12 straight years and could have easily been a four-time winner had he not been pipped in three separate play-offs.
His one win also involved a play-off, but on that occasion Lawrie came out the right side as he defeated home favourite Ignacio Garrido at the Spanish Open nine years ago.
“It was definitely one of the highlights with the other being when I played with my brother in the Dunhill Links at St Andrew’s and we finished sixth. To be able to share that with him was fantastic and not many sportsmen can say they shared the arena with their brother.
“I consider myself very lucky because of what I achieved and what I did. You could look back on the four play-offs I was in and say I could have won them all and could have been a four-time winner on tour but I can’t do that. At the time I gave it my best shot and that’s as good as I could give and I was a thorough professional from start to finish.
“I wasn’t one of the lads who was down the pub at the night time, I gave it all I could and here I am, that’s it, I couldn’t have done any more. I’m proud of what I did but would I liked to have been there a little longer? Yes, but sometimes that’s not the way it works out.
“I grew up with golf and dreaming of playing it professionally. When I was in Terenure College, a big rugby school, I didn’t play rugby because I didn’t want to damage myself for golf.
“I used to get laughed at for saying ‘my left hand was worth €2 million and my right worth €3 million’ but that’s the way I looked at it. I always wanted to be a professional golfer and I reached that.
“I’m one of the few players out there who can say they won on the European Tour and had a successful career.”
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