Lane: Seniors aim

For my first wages, I got £20 for the week, I think. We used to get our wages and play for them on a Friday evening

Barry Lane
Quotes of the week

In the world of modern golf, endorsements and advertising can make a multi-millionaire of a player who never comes close to winning a tournament.

But there are a handful of veterans on the European Tour old enough to remember when players had to bring their own balls to competitions.

One such old hand is Barry Lane, who teed up on the Tour for a 600th time at the Qatar Masters.

And, as the 47-year-old told Golf Night, the days when he used to play for a pot of £30 with his fellow fledgling pros are still clear in his memory.

He told Richard Boxall: "When we weren't playing tournaments, we used to have what we called a 'greedy'.

"I'd play with yourself, Clifford Maudsley, Mark Bavin...everybody put in £5 and we'd all play for it. It was great fun, and you could win £20 or £30 on a Monday afternoon.

"For my first wages, I got £20 for the week, I think. We used to get our wages and play for them on a Friday evening.

"If you didn't do well, Mum wouldn't get any housekeeping for the week, but if you played well you'd double your wages."

Even during tournament time, the life of a Tour pro was far from glamorous.

"Courtesy cars were non-existent," Lane said. "I remember in Austria one year we did have them, and one of the caddies asked to borrow one.

"The girl let him drive it and he drove it all the way to Germany because he'd missed his train! Up until the early 1990s we never had any, and even then they were just for the top players. It's changed an awful lot."

Lane stands 27th on the all-time Tour money list, and much of that cash has been made in recent years as the prize fund has swelled.

"If you think that Seve (Ballesteros) has won 98 tournaments around the world - 50, or whatever, in Europe - he's not even in the top 40 all-time money winners, and Nick Faldo's only in the late 20s.

"You've got people who've been playing for seven years who've overtaken all those guys. The money has changed."

Despite the fact, though, that Lane has made enough money - €6,514,995 in Tour prize money alone - to set himself and his famiily up for life, he has no intention of putting himself out to grass just yet.

"If I'm still competitive I'll carry on playing," he said. "If not I might take it a little bit easier and go to the Seniors, but that looks as though it's quite difficult as well.

"As long as my body stands up, I'm definitely going to carry on."