Golf: Heaven goes for the pro ranks

New Zealand's latest uncommonly gifted golfer, Brad Heaven, is turning his back on the amateur game's biggest stage.

Heaven, 23, yesterday committed himself to a career among the tour professionals, ruling him out of the Eisenhower Trophy world amateur teams championships in October.

Heaven was widely considered a certainty for the three-man New Zealand Eisenhower team to play in Puerto Rico.

Despite being based in the United States for the past four years, where he studied and played at collegiate level for the University of Toledo in Ohio, he registered on the national consciousness in a huge way in January by heading the cream of this country's pros to finish second behind Australian Terry Price in the New Zealand Open in Auckland,

Now, he is set to sign a contract with Octagon, an American sports management firm whose stable of golfers include PGA Tour regulars Davis Love, Brad Faxon and Justin Leonard.

He is to visit New York this week to meet Octagon officials, who are mapping out his entry into the pro ranks.

Heaven said Octagon were arranging an early playing schedule, including a number of invited starts on to the PGA Tour, as well as clothing and equipment contracts. "It's time for the professional ranks," said Heaven, who has ended his college days with a degree in business management as well as a golf game polished enough for him to be rated at No 12 on US publication Golfweek's collegiate rankings last week.

"I have a management company all lined up and we're going to have a crack at it.

"I feel ready to move on. My game has progressed and I'm looking forward to the next challenge of professional golf," said Heaven, who is following a path trod by Grant Waite and Craig Perks, the last New Zealand golfers to enter the pro ranks after stints at US colleges in the late 1980s.

Heaven said it was not that easy to ignore the lure of the Eisenhower Trophy, but it was important to enter the pro ranks while he had a profile.

"With the results I've had lately the opportunity has come up for me to turn pro early and have a go at the professional ranks."

He hoped to make a number of invited appearances on the PGA Tour in the US this year, as well as in Europe. "Octagon have a guy based in Europe and hopefully I can get a start or two on the Challenge Tour or even the European Tour. If they can come up with that I will certainly go for it."

It will take something extraordinary for Heaven to earn his PGA Tour card for 2005 from a handful of starts this season, and he already has plans in place to attend the tour's qualifying school in November.

"I've got that lined up for the end of the year.

"There's a lot of very, very good players out there. After playing college golf for four years you start to realise that.

"We'll just have to see how it goes but I'm looking forward to the challenge of it all. I'm confident enough that I can do all right out of it."

He did not expect immediate success; rather, it was something "you hope for, you just never know".

New Zealand Golf Association operations manager Phil Aickin said Heaven's decision to bypass the Eisenhower event was not at all surprising.

"The Eisenhower is but one event and he has a long professional career ahead of him. I think we've got to put the Eisenhower in perspective to where it fits in the programme of elite golfers."

- NZPA