Syme's silverlining underlines the value of patience

The Herald Scotland

19 hours ago

Or, at least, you're used to hearing the band's name muttered on the golf course as auld Cammy hoiks one off the toe of his 5-iron and gasps, 'that's only going in one bloody direction', as it veers wildly into the impenetrable shrubbery. Again.
The reason I bring Horan into this week's meander is that his management company, Modest Golf, looks after the affairs of Connor Syme, who became the latest Scot to win on the DP World Tour at the KLM Open in Amsterdam.
Horan, as you can imagine, has quite the following on social media. On the platform X, the site that flabbergasting madcaps, Donald Trump and Elon Musk, have clashed handbags on recently, Horan has over 39 million disciples. Tiger Woods has a paltry 6.4 million in comparison.
Given that he's handy with the stick and ba', Horan posts a lot about golf. Back when Syme won his maiden professional title on the second-tier Challenge Tour in Turkey in 2019, Horan stuck up a message of hearty congratulations above a picture of the Fifer.
Underneath flowed a torrent of gushing responses from dreamy pop fans saying things like, 'I love you', 'you are amazing' and 'will you marry me?'. Funnily enough, it was a bit like the comments of the readers under the Tuesday column on The Herald's website.
This tsunami of adoration, of course, was largely directed at Horan himself and not for Syme's Turkish triumph although, amid the giddy worship by teenyboppers, was the odd response saying, 'ever since he won the Northeast District Open Amateur in 2013, I've followed Connor's career keenly.'
Six years on from his breakthrough as a professional, Syme now has the KLM Open trophy plonked on his mantelpiece.
As he gazed at the names engraved into the clump of silverware that was presented to him on Sunday, the 29-year-old was understandably cock-a-hoop to have his own name chiselled into a decorated roll of honour.
Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Jose Maria Olazabal, Colin Montgomerie, Payne Stewart, Lee Westwood, Darren Clarke, Sergio Garcia?
Syme certainly won't tire of giving this spoil of golfing war a regular polish with some Silvo and a lint free cloth. This win was the 150th by a Scottish golfer on the European circuit. A nice little milestone.
It's a case of welcome to the club as far as Syme is concerned. Over the past few years, he's watched old amateur sparring partners like Robert MacIntyre, Grant Forrest and Ewen Ferguson win on the DP World Tour.
In that time, he knocked on the door more times than an Avon lady but couldn't quite get over the threshold. Since 2020, Syme has had three second place finishes, four thirds and 18 other top-10s on the main tour.
Eager observers would often say, 'his time will come', but there are never any guarantees of that in this game. And you can hing on a heck of a long time too.
Oliver Wilson, the former Ryder Cup player, had nine seconds before he got to savour his first tour victory at the 228th attempt.
Syme's fellow Scot, David Drysdale, meanwhile, played 576 events on the DP World Tour and never got over the winning line despite a number of close shaves which featured a quartet of runners-up finishes. For many, that time never comes.
Patience and perseverance remain great attributes in this pursuit and Syme continues to display those in spades.
The former Walker Cup player, who lost narrowly to a certain Scottie Scheffler in the final day singles as GB&I suffered a grisly thumping in the 2017 transatlantic tussle, made the switch into the paid ranks that season and marked his debut by finishing 12th in the tour's Portugal Masters on an invitation.
At that time, there was a dearth of young Scottish talent on the circuit. In this relatively barren land, it was hardly surprising that Syme's sturdy showing in Portugal was greeted with the kind of triumphant reaction that could've been accompanied by the 20th Century Fox fanfare.
He breezed through the qualifying school at the end of that campaign to fast-track himself to the DP World Tour, but he just failed to hold on to his card.
His stint on the Challenge Tour – now the HotelPlanner Tour – in 2019 not only gave him a first pro victory in Turkey, it also equipped him with a lot of the various golfing tools that were, perhaps, missing in that rookie campaign when he'd just made a big leap from amateur golf to the rigours of the main tour.
The second-tier remains an uncompromising coalface and its no frills cut-and-thrust certainly provides an eye-opening, at times eye-watering, yet wonderfully robust apprenticeship. Earn your stripes there and you've made it the hard way.
Syme knows that. 'The Challenge Tour was essential to my development,' he said in a chinwag with this correspondent a couple of years ago.
'I won my first event of the season on it but still just held on to one of the promotion places. It was a hard year, but it set me up for tour life again.'
It certainly did. After this latest tartan-tinged tour triumph, let's hope Syme's career trajectory continues in, well, one direction.