Golf: Blue collar work ethic keeps Fowler in the money

If Peter Fowler is due to play a tournament on a course he has not encountered before, he says he will turn up on the Monday to "do some work".

Before you mutter a sentence that starts with the words "get off your" and ends with "get a real job", trust in the knowledge that when your world ranking stands at 185 - as Fowler's does - nothing is guaranteed without hard work.

Not a tour card for 2006, not exemption for major tournaments, not even next week's cheque.

Living the lifestyle Fowler has carved out for himself has been the result of hard work, ever since the day a mate of his in Sydney decided he was going to be a golf pro and he thought it sounded like a good idea too.

Last week, while showing the Herald on Sunday around the venue for next month's New Zealand Open, he was working, always checking out the best angles on the course, constantly referring to his notebook (which had a self-drawn map of every hole with blue-inked arrows indicating contours, wind direction and elevation).

Fowler was wearing a short-sleeved golfing jacket with a blue collar which seemed entirely appropriate. In terms of getting to know a course, you couldn't pick a better player to play a round with.

"I've never been a big hitter, so I've always had to think my way around the golf course," he said.

In the mid-1990s, Fowler couldn't think his way around a mini-golf course. After he enjoyed what seemed to be a breakthrough year in 1993 - he won the New Zealand Open at Paraparaumu Beach and the BMW International in Europe - he then disappeared without a trace.

"I had no money, no card and no game," he once told me.

He set up as a coach in New Zealand (his wife Kim is a Kiwi), but nagging at him was the thought he had more to offer on the tour.

He worked harder, got fitter, got his card to the European Tour back and has held on to it reasonably comfortably since 2001.

Last year he finished 73 on the order of merit with more than €280,000 ($510,300) - down on 2003, but more than respectable (it is estimated that it costs €40,000 ($73,000) to stay on tour for the year).

And Fowler hopes his work ethic will keep him on the tour for another 10 years at least.

If Fowler's attempt at a second New Zealand Open falls short, he will take comfort in the fact he wanted for nothing in preparation.

- HERALD ON SUNDAY