By Mathieu Wood
James Morrison turned 40 last month, and the milestone – at a crossroads in his career – has helped prompt a shift in his perspective.
After 15 years on the DP World Tour, the Englishman is this season without full playing rights for the first time since graduating from the HotelPlanner Tour in 2009.
Having turned professional in 2006, playing golf has long since become what he knows best. But in the immediate aftermath of losing his card at the Genesis Championship in South Korea, Morrison felt he was “at the top of the mountain”.
As he put it in an interview in the DP World Tour's Green Room, the "next chapter" was upon him. Morrison just wasn't sure what his new reality would look like.
Unlike most sports where professionals often retire in their early 30s, golfers usually play well beyond that.
“Golf is a different beast," Morrison said. "I think you almost want to be able to retire at 35, because then you have plenty of time ahead of you to do something else.
"For every normal tour pro, aka every journeyman pro, whatever you want to call it, all of our fears are about what is the next step, next chapter, because all we know is golf.
"With most sports you’re done by 33 so you know you need a next step, whatever it is.
"All of us are not fortunate enough to be the Rory McIlroys of the world, where it means you can call it a day when you want to call it a day.
"Most of us have to look for another avenue of making money and having a job. You want to play golf as long as you can, but at the same time it’s not always beneficial to play for as long as you can."
From the outside looking in, the mere thought that a player with his longevity and ability - which has helped him win twice on the DP World Tour - was considering next steps away from competitive golf may seem unthinkable.
But at the end of another demanding campaign, more mentally than physically, Morrison was weighing up his options.
For the first season since his graduation onto the DP World Tour, he had failed to record a top ten as he finished 122nd on the Race to Dubai Rankings - eight spots outside the cut-off to retain your card.
"After Korea at the end of the season, I felt like I was at the top of the mountain, really," he added. "I’d had enough of the travelling."
Reflecting on the psychological challenges of coming to terms with losing his full playing rights, he added: "The competitor inside me wants to keep playing golf but at the time you want the next chapter to be there for the ease of transition but, unfortunately, it’s not quite as simple as that."
Despite his own doubts, Morrison opted to try to regain his card through Qualifying School - appearing at Final Stage for the first time since 2013.
With hindsight, he wishes he hadn’t.
"I wasn't mentally in any shape or form to do that," he said of the DP World Tour's six-round marathon. "But I kind of felt the need to at least give that a go."
Unsuccessful in regaining his tour card for 2025, it was fellow 2009 HotelPlanner Tour graduate Edoardo Molinari that won the event at INFINITUM in Spain in November.
Perhaps knowing nothing else, Morrison started the new season like many of his previous ones. He played events in Australia and Mauritius, before eventually winding down for Christmas at home with his family.
Then, while initially mentioned in jest at the time of losing his DP World Tour status, he embraced a new challenge by working as an on-course analyst as part of the global broadcast of the Bapco Energies Bahrain Championship.
The experience of swapping his clubs for a microphone - a role becoming ever more common among professionals - was one Morrison "really enjoyed" and hopes to revisit.
While he may have limited opportunities to play on the DP World Tour this season, time away from the game at the start of this year has provided "a nice awakening" and helped him reevaluate his outlook on his career so far and what lies ahead.
"I'm only 40, still fit and healthy," he said.
"I played a practice round with Sean Crocker here in Kenya. He’s like 'I can’t believe you're only 40 and talking about doing commentary and giving up. Are you some sort of idiot?’.
"That sort of stuff has hit home with me a little bit. I've taken a breath for the last few months, but it's now time to get my head down and try and succeed again."
So, after appearing in back-to-back events on the HotelPlanner Tour, Morrison is this week preparing for his 434th start on the DP World Tour in the Magical Kenya Open presented by absa at Muthaiga Golf Club.
"One thing I look back at with my career is I never enjoyed the highs enough and the lows were always too low," he added.
"I wish I’d ignored the lows and really enjoyed the highs. I think every golfer takes for granted good golf, winning events, finishing top five, playing the Majors and being top 100 in the world, whatever else.
"You think that's what your divine right is, but it's not.
"I never really sucked in the good times as much as I really wanted to. I want to have those feelings again of winning and excelling and doing well and making my son and wife proud. That sort of stuff is more important.
"I still have that love of the game and that love to want to keep playing. The want to practise is still there. So, the minute that goes, that's the minute you kind of think of calling it a day."
As a competitor, that desire is something that doesn't just leave you. In fact, it's being back around some of today's rising stars that has provided Morrison with renewed purpose.
"What hits home is how the young kids that are coming out on to Tour now are all so young," he said.
"They're like, ‘So what's your story?'. You tell them your story, that you played [at seven] Majors, everything bar Augusta.
“They say, 'Oh, bloody hell. That's amazing, I wish I could do that'.
"You look back at your career and you've achieved way more than what you want to tell yourself.
"Obviously there's always better and there will always be worse. When I started out on my journey as a professional in 2006, if someone had told me I'd be doing this interview now having played on tour for as long as I had I probably would have laughed.
"But you have got to really look back and actually give yourself some praise because as golfers we are all very quick to not give ourself praise about how well we've played that day or how well we've played that year."
Morrison has seen the professional game evolve over almost two decades, and is in no doubt that his longevity has been in part down to the increased standards being set of players.
"I think the top end of golf is just as good as it was back then," he explained. "But I think the strength in depth now is so deep.
"I played the HotelPlanner Tour for the last two weeks and the young lads who have come out now all look ready to play. They all look like professionals.
"Back when I first got my card, the gym was pretty quiet. Mondays at a range were empty. Now the Mondays are like the old Tuesdays. The gyms are absolutely packed out.
"Everyone's now more professional in whatever they do, and I think if you're not doing that now, you're going to get run over by the crowd.
"So, you have to kind of move with those times. And if you don't, it's going to get worse.
"I think that's testimony to the young lads coming out that they push the older guys to want to get better because they know they have to."
There is a constant requirement to reinvent yourself.
"Someone made a good point the other week," he added.
"Being a Tour golfer is like being a CEO of your own business but every year you have to reapply for your job, but when you reapply for your job there are 25 new guys who are younger, hungrier and want to take your job off you."
There, arguably, lies what makes professional golf so demanding and what defines its essence.
Morrison came close to quitting the game earlier in his career, writing in a Player Blog in 2019 that it had taken over his life.
As a proud dad to his son, Finley, and husband to wife, Jessica, he admits he has wracked his brain over recent months about all possibilities since losing his DP World Tour status.
"My son is 12 now and he travelled his first four years on tour," he reflected.
"He's done it. I’m lucky, he knows the script of what tour life is like. He's got the Tour app on his phone; he knows all the scores and he understands it all really well.
"He's been to every event ten times over so he knows what I'm doing, why I'm doing it and where I'm at.
"So that makes that side of it really, really easy, but obviously to come away from my wife, son, mum and dad, with them getting older, makes you again think about all the stuff you missed out with your friends, extended family, etc.
"My team around me, my coaches and my wife, have been brilliant in terms of being a great support network for me wanting to keep playing and keep going."
While there have been difficult moments along the way, something that has never been missing is his childish enthusiasm for a sport that has given him a lot and one that he hopes can still do so through both the DP World and HotelPlanner Tours.
"I'm only going to get 10-12 DP World Tour events this season, probably, maybe a bit more than that," he said.
"So, I've got to try and take everything I can with both hands.
"But that is actually quite exciting for a mindset point of view because you can't waste time and just have to give it everything and see what happens."
