Bon will play it by ear in Europe

Northland golfer Caroline Bon has survived her first crisis of confidence as a professional and will fly to Europe on Saturday to give the European Tour a crack.
Bon qualified for limited playing card on the Ladies European Tour at the end of last year but decided against taking it up instead hoping that her good form in the Australasian part of the tour would earn her sponsor invites. Despite qualifying for the Australian Open and finishing 15th in the New Zealand Open that proved tougher than expected and she had some dark moments.
"For the past two months I've been asking myself if this is what I want to do or not because I applied for all these sponsor invites, which of course I wasn't guaranteed to get, but I wasn't getting any positive answers."
She continued asking herself the big questions but her boyfriend Billy West encouraged her to take a chance rather than wait in Whangarei and stew.
"At the time I only had one sponsor's invite and I couldn't believe it after I had done so well in Australia, making 'X' amount of money and I thought 'hell, I'll have to spend it all just to play in one tournament' but Billy really helped me. He said if you do really well in that tournament then anything could happen, just go," she said.
So she went ahead and booked a flight and fortunately it turned out to be good advice. The Swiss invitation came through to add to her Slovakian invitation and she is expecting confirmation of an invitation to the Dutch Open to arrive before she leaves; making three tournaments in a month-long trip.
She won't be alone either, with West committing to caddy for her. If she earns a top-10 finish at any of the tournaments, she will receive automatic entry into the following tournament and that's what she what she is aiming for. She has made arrangements with airline Emirates to allow her to extend her stay if necessary.
"But either way I'll be playing and learning and it will be better than missing out all together," she said.
Then she faces a big decision whether to return to Europe for Q-School in December.
"That's another decision I'll face when I get back and it may depend on sponsorship coming through or not," she said.
She starts the Slovakian Open next Thursday and she shook off some tournament "cobwebs" during the weekend with a third place in the Muriwai Open, finishing behind Lydia Ko and Phillis Reti. She was particularly happy with her final round - a one-under 71 - shot in windy and wet conditions on Sunday.
"It was like waking up to playing tournament golf again, the 30 knot winds and the rain squalls ... but I'm really happy with how I'm playing at the moment, my long game's good and I need just a little bit more work on my short game and I'm right there."