Galway hasn’t enjoyed a major golf star since Christy O’Connor and his nephew Christy O’Connor Jnr lit up European golf with multiple tournament wins and Ryder Cup appearances.
But they are now licking their lips at the prospect of watching 25-year-old Bearna native Liam Nolan take his place alongside the world’s stars next season as he looks to graduate from Europe’s second-tier HotelPlanner Tour.
The Galway Golf Club star made an excellent start to his bid to win one of 20 DP World Tour cards awarded to the leading players in the Road to Mallorca Rankings when he finished third in the SCD Championship and tied for fourth in the MyGolfLife Open in South Africa.
Even though he missed the cut in his next three starts, Nolan is focussed on learning his trade and remaining mentally strong. Would he like to make the jump this year? Yes. But he’s not putting himself under pressure by setting a deadline.
“I’m delighted,” Nolan said of his start to the season at Golf Ireland’s season-launch at Carton House earlier this month.
“I’m not looking too deeply into my missed cuts because they’ve been very, very marginal. Sometimes you can do no wrong in some weeks, and you’re inside the top three comfortably, and then the next couple of weeks it’s just that fraction off.
“Overall, it’s been a very, very good start to the year I’m in a very good place with my game and with my mindset. So I’m really happy with how it’s gone.”
Rather than worrying about rankings or tournament wins, Nolan is focussed on improving his game and if he can do that, he believes the results will come.
“Every week, I’m just looking to learn about my own game and seeing where I can improve,” he said. “Whether I get off the HotelPlanner Tour or when I progress that will come in its own time when I’m ready.
“For now, I’m just looking to compete every week and looking to learn. Those are the two main goals,. I am not going to rush myself.”
Nolan enjoyed a successful amateur career, winning the Brabazon Trophy and earning a Walker Cup cap and he feels his game stacks up well compared to those he’s competed against on tour so far.
“It’s different to amateur golf, for sure,” he said. “The courses are different, the travel is quite different. But I have a good team around me and a good caddy so things like that make it that much easier to find your feet.
“Watching everyone else’s game gives me a lot of confidence in my own game. I thought there’d be another big leap to make but so far, I haven’t really seen that to be there.
“It’s all about who’s on and on any given week. And I was able to prove to myself in the first week or two that if I’m on, I can win. I know I didn’t get it over the line because of some amazing play by Daniel Van Tonder in South Africa. It’s a real confidence boost and I’m delighted with where my game is at.”
Balancing international travel with keeping your game in decent shape is a delicate balancing act but Nolan feels he has coped well so far and as a late bloomer in the game, he’s looking to see more improvement.
“I’m trying to keep everything in check, get through that checklist of everything I’m working on, and making very incremental improvements all the time,” he explained. “It’s kind of how my career has gone so far. Being a late bloomer in golf , I have been progressing up through the ranks and nothing has ever come in a massive jump at any time. I take quite a systemic approach to it all, and that’s how I’m going to continue.”
Rest is as important to Nolan as practice and getting that balance right is going to be key ahead of a busy season.
“Rest is massive in this game,” he said. “It’s hard to go to the range for eight hours. a day after getting back from India. You have to recuperate, re engage with your coach and just make out another plan for the next few weeks.”
Rubbing shoulders with his former Irish amateur teammates on tour is a huge positive for Nolan, who is following in the footsteps of Padraig Harrington, Paul McGinley and Darren Clarke,.
They learned from senior players like O’Connor Jnr, Eamonn Darcy and Des Smyth during their early years on tour and Nolan has his own peer group for support.
“Max Kennedy is a very good friend of mine so we have a nice group at the moment and we just push each other to become better,” Nolan added. “If you can surround yourself with the right people, it’s everything.”
Nolan has already played in a major, brilliantly qualifying for The Open at Royal Troon last year.
He missed the cut but he’s determined to return, explaining that Shane Lowry’s Open win at Royal Portrush in 2019 inspired him to head straight out to practice.
“It was great to see Shane win that when I was thinking of progressing on to the professional golf stage myself,” Nolan said. “Hopefully I can keep improving and get to that stage myself of winning a major.”
Like Lowry, whose father Brendan won an All Ireland Football Championship with Offaly, Nolan comes from a talented sporting family.
His father Tom won an All Ireland Hurling medal with Galway in 1988 and while Liam played multiple sports, golf is now his main focus.
“I played about six sports growing up, as you do in Galway,” he joked. “And I kept most of them up to a pretty decent level until I was 16. I played golf and basketball, but after suffering a few injuries, I focused fully on golf from 18.
“I was definitely a late developer. I wasn’t one of these kids when I was 11 and 12 who went out winning golf tournaments. I just loved it. So ended up developing, and, made my first Irish panel when I was 20. So, yeah, it took a while, but we got there.”
