A YEAR playing alongside Challenge and EuroPro Tour regulars has convinced Minchinhampton golfer Joe Stevens that he has the ability to one day make it on the main European Tour.

Joe, who will turn 20 next week, has spent this year as a PGA trainee at the Wisley Golf Club in Surrey. Now he is taking time out to see whether he has what it takes to make it as a professional golfer on the tour.

By his own admission Joe did not have a stellar amateur record – he played to a handicap of one – but he feels his game has come together under the guidance of South Cerney Golf Club’s coach and star maker Tom Motley.

Ross Langdon, a Motley client, is the runaway leader of the Gloucestershire & Somerset PGA Order of Merit.

Stevens, a former Wycliffe and Hartpury College student who lives in Stonehouse, has set his sights lower to begin with, hoping to come through the qualifying stages of the third tier EuroPro Tour.

“I will be bidding to get through their qualifying school which begins in March,” he said, “and I hope to sharpen my game in Spain this winter with some appearances on the Gecko Tour.

“While in Spain I will be staying and practicing with former England Boys player Jamie Dick who was briefly a Hartpury teammate. Jamie has made a decent start on the EuroPro Tour. “I was nothing special as an amateur but while at Wisley this year I played with Challenge and EuroPro regulars and it made me realise that I could compete with those guys.

“My game has really come on since linking up with Tom Motley at South Cerney as my coach.

“Tom has experience with pros and knows the circuit. Now I feel as if I am very close to the required standard.”

Motley said: “We have seen some big gains from the work we have done with Joe swing-wise.

“He has plenty of room for improvement but he is a hard-working boy with the right attitude to really develop his golf.” Funding a life on tour is very expensive and Joe has been dipping into his savings and his 2015 pro-am winnings. He has now set up a crowdfunding website to recruit sponsors.

But he freely admits that he could not contemplate a place on any tour without the financial support of his uncle David Dodge, who though in his seventies and having suffered a stroke remains a fellow Minchinhampton (New) club member.

“My uncle is the only one in my family who plays golf and was the one who first got me started in the sport as a kid,” said Stevens. “He remains my greatest supporter.”

“I have frozen my PGA training for at least two years while I play golf full time in a bid to make it on the EuroPro Tour.

“Of course, the main target eventually would be to earn a living on the main European Tour itself with many of the top players in the game.”

If you want to help a budding pro golfer at the start of his professional journey, visit http://www.crowdfunder.co.uk/tour-golf-professional-1