Show Notes
From Walker Cup heartbreak and Q-School pressure to European Tour glory, Richard Finch reflects on the highs, lows and near-misses of a life in elite amateur and professional golf. Plus the famous Irish Open plunge, Rory McIlroy at 15, Chubby Chandler, and rediscovering the fun of the game at RNGC.
Richard Finch’s route to the European Tour began on a municipal course in Hull, where an obsession with getting better once led him to spend the night in the junior room practising his putting. He became one of England’s leading amateurs, winning the Spanish Amateur, English Amateur and St Andrews Links Trophy, but his amateur career ended with the bitter disappointment of missing out on a Walker Cup place at Ganton.
Turning professional at 25, Finch initially came under the wing of a young Eddie Hearn before earning his European Tour card in dramatic fashion at Q-School. But by 2007 his career was in serious danger. In this episode, Richard revisits the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship where he first met Dan, the extraordinary final round in Mallorca that saved his card, and the remarkable transformation that followed when he won in New Zealand just weeks later.
Five months after that first victory came the moment for which he may always be best remembered: winning the Irish Open at Adare Manor despite falling waist-deep into the water beside the 18th fairway. Richard also recalls playing with a 15-year-old Rory McIlroy, Tiger Woods renaming him “Robert Finch”, the difficulties that eventually brought his Tour career to an end, and the joy of rediscovering uncomplicated, competitive golf at this summer’s RNGC Invitational.
00:00 — Introducing Richard Finch
01:49 — Growing up in Hull
03:52 — The junior who slept at the golf club
06:48 — Scratch golf and Yorkshire county days
08:16 — Deciding to become a Tour professional
09:26 — Family, expectation and Richard’s mum
11:17 — Dave Jagger, Pete Cowen and golfing mentors
14:01 — England golf and winning the Spanish Amateur
16:18 — English Amateur glory and Walker Cup heartbreak
20:00 — Turning professional with Eddie Hearn
22:26 — An 81 at Q-School — and somehow earning a card
25:52 — Discovering he belonged on the European Tour
28:58 — Characters, Chubby Chandler and life inside ISM
32:02 — Losing confidence in 2007
36:09 — The 2007 Dunhill Links
38:27 — Mallorca: “Just don’t shank it”
42:09 — From survival to victory in New Zealand
44:25 — Winning the Irish Open — from inside the river
48:35 — Wet shoes, police outriders and a Ryanair queue
52:14 — Rory McIlroy at 15 and “Robert Finch”
53:52 — Winning twice, Ryder Cup talk and trying to improve
56:55 — Injury and the end of Tour life
1:00:36 — Rediscovering the fun at RNGC
1:02:16 — Why golf remains a great game
Links
Follow Richard Finch on Instagram
Follow RNGC, Dan's backyard golf club, on Instagram at @rngc2021
Read Dan Davies on Substack at The Sacred Acre
Get 20% of your next purchase from soundergolf.com with the code Pod20
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
More from This Golfing Life
Rosie Bailey and Karen Crum arrived at golf from almost opposite directions. Rosie was a reluctant junior who became an elite player, represented Scotland and earned a scholarship to the University of California, Berkeley, where the late Nancy McDaniel and Anne Walker, who now coaches the all-conquering Stanford women's golf programme, became hugely influential figures in her life.
In this special archive edition of This Golfing Life, we travel back to the spring of 2014 and Royal Liverpool Golf Club, where I sat down with three-time major champion Padraig Harrington ahead of that summer’s Open Championship at Hoylake.
Few people have enjoyed a better seat from which to watch the story of modern professional golf unfold than Gordon Simpson.
In Part Two of our extended conversation with John E Morgan, we pick up one of golf's most extraordinary career trajectories. Within months of turning professional, Morgan wins on the Challenge Tour, earns his European Tour card and then heads to America, where — inspired by watching Tiger Woods at close quarters — he emerges from PGA Tour Q School with a second Tour card. Suddenly the docker's son from Bristol is sharing ranges with Ernie Els and meeting his childhood heroes, while still sufficiently starstruck to sprint across a golf course for Adam Sandler's autograph.
This week on This Golfing Life, we begin a special two-part interview with former PGA Tour and European Tour pro John E Morgan — one of the game’s great characters, and a golfer whose rise was as unconventional as the man himself.