After making the cut at the incredibly difficult Shinnecock Hills in June’s U.S. Open, Calum Hill has taken to the European Challenge Tour like a duck to water.
The Scotsman will tee it up at the Swedish Challenge hosted by Robert Karlsson this week after recording a tied 26thplace finish at last week’s Euram Bank Open, in addition to a tied 47thfinish on his Challenge Tour debut, at Le Vaudreuil Golf Challenge.
Hill is enjoying life on Europe’s top developmental tour and is content with his displays to date, despite acknowledging a handful of errors which have prevented him from challenging at the top of leaderboards.
“It’s nice to get two solid starts,” he said. “The first two days have been alright and then the weekends have been a bit slow. It’s good to be there at least.
“It’s fun travelling round and seeing different parts of the world and playing different golf courses.
“I’ve made too many errors but I’ve been able to get it around the course fine. I haven’t been hitting it brilliantly but good enough in order to play.
“I’ve just had a few missed putts here and there and a few errors that have just come with being a bit silly sometimes. Overall, it’s not been too bad.
“I’m in a position where I need to do well in order to keep playing so I just need to try and win one! You might as well give it a go. If you’re aiming high, you’re going to get close.
“I had a decent start last week and put myself in a position to have a nice tournament and I didn’t manage to jump on it. If I have a similar start where I’m there or thereabouts, within distance of the top, that would be brilliant.
“Then to have a nice weekend would be good. Wherever that is, we’ll have to see, but you just have to aim for first and see where you get.”
Sergio Garcia, Rory McIlroy and Jon Rahm were just three of the big-name players to miss the cut at the U.S. Open and although Shinnecock Hills was the subject of criticism from some quarters for the difficulty of its set-up, 23 year old Hill admits he relished the opportunity to test himself against some of the world’s best.
“The course was something like I’ve never played before,” he said. “It was so long and so demanding in every facet of your game. Tee shots had to be brilliant, shots into the green had to be brilliant, you had to chip great and putt great and then it was windy a couple of times.
“It was really good fun but I’ve never experienced anything like it. It was great to be out there against the best players in the world.
“I was just out there having a great time. It couldn’t make less of a difference to me; I couldn’t tell you what a good course or a bad course is like. Everyone’s out there saying ‘the U.S. Open, the hardest test in golf’ and I thought ‘well this is hard to me so it seems like they’ve done a good job!’”
Hailing from Perthshire, Scotland, Hill’s third Challenge Tour event will get under way at 7.35am on Thursday and after playing a practice round at Katrineholms Golfklubb, he believes it’s a course with great variety.
“This is a really nice course,” he said. “You’ve got a nice variety; the front nine is really open where you can give it a whack, while you have to place it a little more on the back nine.
“The greens are rolling great. You can get some great pin positions out here if you’re attacking them so I think it’s a really nice track.
“The last three weeks have been brilliant, all the courses have been nice. It’s been really fun – I think I’ve hopped in at a really nice time!”
