“I don’t know,” admits James Sugrue when asked what the future would be like if he gave up professional golf.
That’s how close he was to the edge. Injuries and some bad luck had taken their toll and another year on a third-level tour just wasn’t whetting his appetite for the game. But he came through the Clutch Pro Tour with flying colours to secure his first full HotelPlanner Tour card for this season.
Rather than view it as a stay of execution, Sugrue feels he has finally caught a break in professional golf and is desperate to showcase his ability on Europe’s second tier.
“It was a great year for me. At the start of the year, when you know what you have to do on a third-level tour or a feeder tour, it is tough. Whether it be Clutch or Alps, you need to finish top-3 for HotelPlanner Tour status. There are a lot of good players out there, every week is full fields of 130 players, so it is tough, but I’m very proud of myself the way I finished out the year,” explains the Mallow man.
“I’m not getting any younger and this year I just did not want to play on a third-level tour again next year. I did put myself under pressure coming into the last few events. I got sick of being where I was and wanted to take the next step. At the start of the year, I would have bitten your hand off to have a full HotelPlanner Tour card for 2026.
“Money has a huge thing to do with it. Not many sponsors want someone playing on a third-level tour. If someone on the third-level tour tells you that they want to be there, they’re either lying or they are delusional. You shouldn’t want to be there, that’s no disrespect, but everyone I know sees it as a stepping stone to better things.”
Sugrue has a burning desire to move on to better things and is striving for immediate success on the HotelPlanner Tour when he gets his first start in two weeks.
“My goal is to be in the top 15. I wouldn’t be a huge goal-setter, but I know that ifI play well, I am capable of doing that. I am going to apply myself properly and do all the right things in the pre-season,” he affirms.
Sugrue’s front room is like a playroom for golf nerds. Golf clubs and golf bags are scattered everywhere, with every make of putter just begging to be picked up. Surrounding the table are photographs and memorabilia from a glittering period in his amateur career, which included winning the 2019 Amateur Championship and making appearances in the Walker Cup, The Open Championship, the US Open, and the Masters.
Golf is Sugrue’s life and, at 28, time is very much on his side to start achieving as a professional. He placed third on the Clutch Pro Tour’s season-long Order of Merit to clinch promotion with finishes of 2nd, 2nd, and 4th in his last three events. In all, Sugrue registered six top-five finishes in a very consistent season but only pocketed approximately €30,000. That’s the reality of life on a third-level tour; despite showing great form this year, it’s extremely difficult to make a living.
“I started off well and was inside the top five on the Order of Merit early on, then had three missed cuts in the middle of the season, then the back end was very good, and the last event was double points and the one before that was one and a quarter points, so it was nice to get some good results there,” Sugrue explains.
“It’s very hard to make money playing on the third-level tours. Even to break even you need to be there or thereabouts. If you stand on the back of a third-level tour range, the players don’t look any different from those on a DP World Tour range; it’s just small margins. It’s all about consistency throughout the season. This year I didn’t win, I came close, but I had a good few top fives and a second, so I was knocking on the door all year.
“There are players that can play and then there are players who are there just so they can say they are a professional golfer and have loads of money to back themselves. It’s not easy to be out there and playing for money that’s not great. If you don’t have many sponsors, it can be tough, playing one week to try and make a few quid to fund the next event.
“This year it was costing me around €1,200 per week on the Clutch Tour. The events in the Middle East are more expensive than that. It was Fiat 500s this year to save money, but we made it work.”
The glass certainly seems half full for Sugrue, but there were plenty of times where it was smashed to smithereens. Sugrue’s early voyage into the professional ranks wasn’t helped by turning pro just before Covid-19 hit, meaning his playing opportunities were extremely limited, particularly as the mini-tours struggled for funds. In 2022, he enjoyed his best spell on the Alps Tour and, heading into the next campaign, his hopes were high for promotion. But a serious back injury sidelined him for over a year and, on his first tournament back, a freak accident at an Airbnb accommodation saw him break his ankle, meaning that the two injuries combined kept him out for two years.It wasn’t until 2025 that he felt injury-free, and he now knows he has the game if his body can stay healthy.
“I was unlucky with injuries,” he laughs. “I hurt my back and was out for 18 months and then, in the first tournament back, I hurt my ankle and was out for another six months, so overall I was out for two years. This year was my first year back fully and I loved it. It was so good to be playing injury-free, and it showed in my golf from the beginning. Anyone who knows me knows I would be fairly solid, I’m not flashy, so it was good to have that fitness back and get a card for 2026.
“It was a tough time. Especially with my ankle, when I came back from my back injury I felt ready to kick on and then I rolled my ankle on a spiral staircase in an Airbnb house. I was rushing down the stairs and slipped on a step. I knew straight away, I hadn’t broken anything before, but I knew this was bad. Lying in bed that night I was thinking, ‘How have you let this happen?’ After going through such a lengthy absence with my back and then this happening, it would definitely test your faith.
“It almost makes it a bit sweeter to have come through those lows to having a card and a future.”
For someone who is about to embark on a maiden campaign on the HotelPlanner Tour, it’s fair to say that there isn’t much that Sugrue hasn’t seen. He has tasted the euphoric highs and devastating lows that golf can dish out. Sugrue enjoyed a very good amateur career prior to 2019. He was a 2017 South of Ireland winner and an Ireland international, but his 2019 Amateur Championship victory in Portmarnock is one that will live long in the memory.
Interestingly, just a couple of weeks before he earned promotion to the HotelPlanner Tour, the man he defeated in the 36-hole amateur final, Euan Walker of Scotland, had just earned a DP World Tour card for the first time after three successive years of heartbreak at the final hurdle. Walker is someone who has inspired Sugrue to keep plugging away.
“I was absolutely thrilled for him,” smiles Sugrue. “Euan is a top man, I would have known him in my amateur career, played Walker Cup. I was keeping an eye on the Order of Merit and had seen him come close over the years. That’s tough, to be fighting all year to just get there, then the last hurdle doesn’t go your way. I was delighted for Euan, and the misses didn’t knock him. I reckon he’ll do well on the DP World Tour.”
Sugrue may not be at Walker’s level in the pro ranks just yet, but he was left smiling after he beat the Scot in a thrilling Amateur final six years ago at a packed-out Portmarnock to become the first Irish winner since Alan Dunbar in 2012.
“It was crazy, a day I will never forget. There’s a photo in Mallow Golf Club of the 18th green and it gets the whole crowd in it, and every day when I go in there, I see it,” he reflects, looking at the large canvas photograph of him saluting the crowd in his front room.
“It was a super day and super time, to have my family there and friends, and some friends who had never been on a golf course before had made the trip over. It was unforgettable.”
The rewards that come with an Amateur title are probably more renowned than the trophy. Sugrue got spots in The Open Championship in Portrush, the US Open, and the unique November Masters at Augusta National.His big long-term goal is to get back to those heights as a professional.
“That’s one thing I want to do again. It’s not easy, but we do have qualifiers for The Open so it’s not unthinkable. When I did play in the US Open and The Masters, I would have loved to have had the people there who meant the most to me. To not have them there left a sour taste in my mouth, and I am striving to get there again.”
The November Masters won’t live long in many people’s memory, but for Sugrue it can be argued that he got to experience Augusta National in all its glory. With no patrons, it was a completely different experience. It was soured for him slightly with no family members allowed on site.
“As soon as you drive up Magnolia Lane and you have that player’s badge, they treat you like a king,” he explains.
“It’s everything you think it’s going to be and more. I missed the cut, and Shane was playing with Tiger on Saturday, so I was allowed inside the ropes, which is something that was surreal, and there was pretty much nobody there, it was class.”
Sugrue got more than just inside-the-ropes access to Tiger Woods. He got the screensaver of a lifetime in the pre-tournament build-up when he got up close and personal with the 15-time major winner. The practice green was eerily silent, the Cork man thought he was alone, but over his shoulder he saw the intimidating figure of Woods and chanced his arm at a quick hello.
“I had to go and fanboy him on the putting green,” he laughs. “He was extremely nice to me. I thought that, being Tiger Woods, he wouldn’t want anything to do with some amateur that was playing, but he took his time and said that he had watched the Amateur on Sky Sports. He was very nice to me.
“He was asking me about JP McManus –he was saying that JP is the man –and asked whether I had played Adare Manor a lot. It was very cool.”
The eerie silence of Augusta was nothing compared to the raucous atmosphere of Royal Portrush the year before. Sugrue was handed a brilliant tee time: Darren Clarke, opening group. He thought this was right in his wheelhouse: nice and quiet, under the radar with a few of the early birds.What greeted him on that Thursday morning was pandemonium.
“We were first out at 6:35 so I thought it would be grand, the grandstands wouldn’t be full, but 15 minutes before my tee time they were stopping people from going in because they were already full. I was thinking ‘Oh my god’ it was like a cauldron,” reflects Sugrue, who had no notions of hitting an iron down the intimidating first fairway, which is sandwiched by out-of-bounds fences.
“I wanted the biggest head in the bag. I thought Darren might be hitting a 3-iron but even he said ‘no way’ – I wanted the biggest thing I could see and if I could get something bigger I would have hit it. That was more nerve-racking than The Masters just with the grandstand hugging the tee box. When the silence comes over before you tee off, it’s mental, it’s a tough tee shot as well with OB right and left.
“I remember Darren making birdie and he rolled it in on the first to a huge roar. I birdied the fourth or fifth and we were both one-under and leading The Open! There’s a nice photo of that.”
Sugrue had another chance interaction with golfing royalty. Rory McIlroy trudged into the champions’ locker room –which houses the Amateur champion for the week – broken-hearted and dejected after an opening 79, which included a quadruple bogey at the first hole. Despite this, McIlroy still took the time to talk to Sugrue, and it’s a touch of class he has never forgotten.
“I’ll always remember what he did that day. It was so classy of him. I was in the players’ locker room looking at texts and he just tapped me on the shoulder, ‘Congratulations on winning the Amateur, James.’ I didn’t even know what score he had shot until I looked it up afterwards, and he could so easily have jumped into his car and headed home. He went out of his way to talk to me and give me some advice going forward. What a classy man, what a nice man to do that for me, someone who is a nobody to him, that was a realtouch of class.”
Sugrue would love to reunite with McIlroy at Doonbeg this year as he hopes to tee it up in his first Irish Open since 2020 and first as a professional.
“I’d love to play an Irish Open as a professional. It would mean the world to me. That’s a big goal, to get out there. It would be a great opportunity to have my friends, family, and club members down. I would love to give something back to Mallow Golf Club for sticking with me through the good times and the bad.”
Sugrue has seen plenty of highs and lows in his career and he has all the photographs to prove it. But as he bids to work his way through the golfing pyramid, his ambitions remain to reach the top, and this year could be the one which kick-starts him in the right direction.
“This year is the biggest year of my career without a doubt. With a good start and good people behind me, I’m going to give it my all and anything is possible.”
Leave a comment