On a Wikipedia page listing popular sports in Slovenia, stand-up paddle-boarding takes preference over the game of golf. Yet a young man by the name of Tim Gornik is blazing a train for the sport as he continues to flourish on the European Challenge Tour.
The 24 year old is the European nation’s sole touring golf professional, but a seven under par 65 in the second round of the AEGEAN Airlines Challenge Tour by Hartl Resort is yet another indication that Gornik has the game to compete among the world’s best.
In five appearances this season, he has made every cut and even put himself into contention to become the first Slovenian winner on the Challenge Tour at the KPMG Trophy in Belgium, before finishing tied 12th.
It is a remarkable story, but how has this gem been found in a nation which has approximately a dozen golf courses?
The even more pertinent question though, is - what led Gornik to choosing golf over stand-up paddle-boarding?
Stand-up paddle-boarding - big in Slovenia?
“It’s a random story actually,” said the affable Duke University graduate, who only got a call on Monday to say he was playing in Germany this week. “My dad got golf clubs as a wedding gift when I was six years old and then the whole family just started playing.
“At that time there were only a couple of golf courses in the country and Golf Club Bled is the one I started playing. I still play there now.
“I didn’t play any other sports and then at nine or ten I just kept getting better. Then I had a really good coach, a former German high-jumping coach who had won loads of Olympic medals. Dragan Tancic was his name and he ended up going to Spain, learning golf and then coaching the Spanish national golf team. He worked with guys like Sergio Garcia there.
“He was my swing coach from about 11 years of age to about 2008, when he died of skin cancer. I didn’t know what to do then but I went to an academy in America, the Gary Gilchrist Golf Academy near Orlando.
“Gary coaches guys like Morgan Hoffman and Fabrizio Zanotti, he’s a well-known coach. Then I got into Duke University. One of my best friends and team-mates was Brinson Paolini, so it was cool that all the Challenge Tour tournaments I have played we have travelled together and stayed together. He’s obviously been on here for two years.
Brinson Paolini - Challenge Tour winner and Gornik's close friend
“When I tell Slovenians I play golf they don’t know what to say. They just ask, do you do something else too? When I tell people I was at the golf course for five hours, they just ask, were you tired and relaxing? I have to tell them I was practicing and that’s actually what I do.
“In America nobody even knows where Slovenia is. They think I mean Sweden or they just think it’s some place close to Russia, but it’s fun educating them.”
Certainly, mixing it with some of the best young players in the game on the American collegiate circuit has given Gornik the confidence to believe that the lack golfing history of his home nation will have no bearing on his chances of rising to the highest echelons of world golf.
Now, he is hoping to put Slovenia on the golfing map worldwide and inspire young players to take up the game in his native land.
“We had a really good team in Duke and in my sophomore year we got to the semi-finals of the NCAAs,” he said. “We played Georgia, but unfortunately we lost. It was a great team, I played against Russell Henley, Brinson played Harris English.
“There were other professional players in Slovenia before me but none has ever had a card on one of these major tours. To get a card here would be amazing and that’s my goal for this year.
“I want to promote the game at home as much as I can but it’s getting better, there have been a couple of articles about me. I was the first either in a long time or ever, to earn world ranking points when I did so recently in Belgium, so there was some attention on that. It’s getting a little bigger but it’s hard because it’s not a popular sport.”
Of his 64 over the Beckenbauer Course in Germany which moved him to five under for the week, Gornik said: “It’s definitely up there among the best rounds of my career. I made a bunch of birdies and even made two bogeys at par fives. I got it to eight under through 16 under but blocked another drive at the eighth, my 17th, then just lipped out on number nine.
“For about 16-17 holes I feel like everything went my way. I holed out a wedge at the first hole, my tenth. I was in between distances, so I just hit a wedge as hard as I could from 115 yards out of the rough and it just landed perfectly and trickled into the hole.
“It could have been really special today without the bogeys at par fives and a few missed chances but it’s still the best round I’ve had this year.”
