IN FOCUS RICHIE COUGHLAN: Philip Reidtalks to a player who had the golf world at his feet, but then a freakish accident in a hotel lift changed everything

"I walk a lonely road. The only one that I have ever known. Don't know where it goes. But it's only me and I walk alone."- 'Boulevard Of Broken Dreams', Green Day

FOR RICHIE Coughlan, each step of the journey has been an emotional roller-coaster, of highs and (many) lows and not quite knowing what lay around the next corner. Now, though, he is at peace. Each day, he still places a golf club into his hand, knowing it will pay the bills and give him a good life; but those days of walking the line and knowing you're one pulled tee-shot or pushed putt away from a missed cut, or (in reality) failing to retain a tour card, are gone.

He has left that dream of one day winning on the PGA Tour or caressing the Claret Jug or Wanamaker Trophy behind him. That dream is dead. These days, Richie Coughlan, from Birr, Co Offaly, via Troy, upstate New York, is the Tour Academy instructor at Weston Hills Country Club outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida. He lived the dream and it didn't work out. He's moved on, eventually. Finally, he has let go.

Remember Richie Coughlan? At the tail-end of 1997, he was the talk of the golfing world. Only a sensational young golfer by the name of Tiger Woods created more column inches. That year, Coughlan - a product of the GUI system, who had taken up a golfing scholarship at Clemson University in South Carolina where he was first team All-American for four years and played in the 1997 Walker Cup - created history: he became the first player to win cards at qualifying school on both the PGA Tour and the European Tour. He had the golfing world at his feet, or so it seemed.

Yet, almost immediately in his career, Coughlan - by his own talent - had come to a fork in the road. Did he opt to play on the European Tour and learn the ropes before moving on to the big show of the PGA Tour? Or did he plunge into the shark-infested American circuit as a raw rookie? Coughlan, never one to lack ambition, went for the big time.

So, keeping his European Tour card in the back pocket as a safety net but never getting to use it, Coughlan pursued his dream on the US Tour. He played 31 times on the US Tour in 1998, making 18 cuts and having four top-25 finishes. One time, in the BC Open, he played in the second from last pairing on the final day and looked like winning for a time. But, that year, he became the embodiment of living the thin line between success and failure.

In the last counting event of the 1998 season, Coughlan travelled to the Walt Disney Classic in Orlando within reach of retaining his card. In the final round, he got to the 18th green where his ball had finished some 50 feet from the hole. He didn't know if he needed to hole the putt to retain his card, or if a two-putt par would suffice. He gave the birdie putt a chance, but rolled it five feet past. He missed the par putt. A three-putt bogey finished his season. It was a shot too many. A par would have been good enough to keep his card.

That rookie season, Coughlan finished 151st on the money list and was the grand sum of $435 short of keeping conditional status on tour for the 1999 season. A thin line? "People have no idea," he says. "Sure, there has to be a line and there always has to be somebody around the line. What you have to do is to get away from the line. To be on the right side of it. No one could criticise me or put me down for the way I played my first year. I was 22 years old, the second youngest on tour after Tiger. For a kid to make 170 odd grand, (it was a) great start to a life, a career. I wasn't going to make it any harder (by trying to combine playing on the European Tour). I gave myself the best possible (chance) . . . I don't know how I could have done things differently. I probably would have played in less pro-ams, practice putting more.

"I could have really thrown myself into it. Probably would have worked on my short game technique more. I admire someone like Harrington who is constantly searching for something different. I thought my way was fine, a very natural player, not mechanical. I just figured I would have my good weeks and if they were good enough I wouldn't have to change."

When Coughlan won back his tour card for the 2001 season, he believed he would give it a better shot. He was more streetwise, less inclined to be made giddy when he looked at the tee-times and saw who would be his playing partner. But fate dealt a different hand to Coughlan that year. One day, in a hotel lift, his golf bag got stuck in the door and he reached down to pull it free. Freakishly, he suffered a severe injury, damaging his ribs and the intercostal muscles in his chest. In that injury-ravaged season, he failed to keep his tour card and was subsequently confined to playing the Nationwide Tour and the mini-tours and, each year, wondering if he would ever - or if he was good enough - to get back to where he felt he belonged.

The first true inkling that Coughlan got that his time had come and passed was playing the Gateway Mini-Tour in 2005, his first year off the Nationwide. He went down to Florida believing he would dominate a tour where players paid to play and only the top finishers got to divvy up the purse. He started well, a couple to top-five finishes in the opening two tournaments before he started to feel a bit of a tweak in his chest from practising.

"Ribs heal, the muscle structure doesn't. When you are playing golf at that impact position it vibrates to it and it stirs the muscles up again. Even though you might be a bit tender hitting golf shots, you can do absolutely anything. You can go to the gym no problem. But when it comes to hitting the golf ball, swinging at 120 miles per hour, you feel it. It's very painful. You breath, you cough, you sneeze, turn your torso and it hurts.

"It's not like you can isolate them, you always use these muscles. I don't have any problem now because I don't stress them. But that little area is all scar tissue. I can run, hit balls for hours, play for a couple of days, but if I was to go full time on the road again, hitting shots, every day, every week, every month, it would kick up and I am afraid of that."

In one tournament at Port St Lucie in Florida on the Gateway, Coughlan found himself buried in a bunker, took a heavy swing at the shot and his chest hurt so bad he couldn't play on. He shook hands with his playing partners on the ninth hole and walked in. "I was so disgusted with my situation, that I took the whole summer off."

He went home to Troy in upstate New York, and it was there - at a municipal course - that he first started teaching. "I had great fun for a summer, just happy not to be stressed and not to be frustrated and doing something where I could sleep in my own bed every night or even go on a date if I wanted to. I was teaching. I was being productive, helping people. And it was just a nice taste to it."

Of course, he tried to make it through Q-School again that year, but didn't make it past the first stage. He was 32 at the time. "I said to myself, 'life's passing me by. When's it going to start? Or when is it going to finish? It was a time in my life when I had a lot of time to sit back and look at myself and really ask myself 'was it important to be Richie Coughlan on the TV screen? Am I happy doing it? And do I want it as bad as I did?' The answers were no. I was not happy. I was playing just purely for the money at the end. I wasn't enjoying playing.

"I was putting the whole point of playing the game in the wrong position. My priorities were not right. I just wasn't enjoying it. My confidence wasn't there. With the injury, I was doubting if I could sustain a high level of playing. In my head, I was getting in on myself big time. I (felt) I was finished. I'd had a great college career, played Walker Cup, gone and got two tour cards. One in my right pocket, one in my left, and feeling I'm the best thing since sliced bread . . . I basically went from zero to 60 in a couple of seconds. When I look back, I sort of wish I could have started slower and moved up."

A few weeks ago, as a PGA Tour Academy instructor, Coughlan paid a visit to The Players championship in Sawgrass. One day, walking down the driving range, it took him two hours to get from one end to the other as players spied him and engaged him. He had been a popular addition to the player locker room and there had been times that players had asked what Richie Coughlan was up to and no one knew the answer. That walk down the range, though, was confirmation of how far Coughlan had come with his decision.

"No, I'd no problem telling them I wasn't playing any more. I've nothing to be embarrassed about. The game will wear you down, if you let it. It depends on how hard you are on yourself. I think I was very hard on myself at the end. I didn't want to be 36, 37 down the road and still trying. I'm glad I did. Working out very well. One good thing about doing what I'm doing. I'm teaching what I did. I'm not teaching a Jim McLean-type swing, or Dave Pelz short game. I am teaching PGA Tour stuff. You can't argue with that, the best players in the world. I'm giving back what those few years (on tour) gave to me, just trying to do the best I can."

And he can still play. A few weeks ago, he shot a 64 on the course at Weston Hills. "Played great, didn't miss a shot," he says in that never-changing voice of his with the eyes twinkling as they always did. "The magic's still there and the lads are going, 'you should go back (on tour)' and I'm like, 'no, I've no interest'. When I go out there and see these fellas on tour hitting the shots they have to hit, I shake my head and say, 'they're great'. That was me and I was up for the challenge. I was hard as nails, hard as nails. Growing up in Birr, wanting it. Seeing every challenge I put in front of me, whether it was a club competition, or trying to get on the Irish boys team, or the Leinster team, and I did it. Every time. Boys, youths, senior.

"And basically I didn't stop. Even when I finished college. What next? Turned pro, got on the PGA Tour. It happened, ridiculous, and I'm thinking 'there is nothing I haven't tried or tried to achieve that I have failed at'. I got to the PGA Tour and the whole thing was to stay there.

"But I'm not as emotional as I was two or three years ago. I used to avoid people because I didn't want to explain the fact that I had stopped playing. Now, I have no problem with that. I am at peace with it."

When Coughlan first went out on tour, he was one of those with a grip-it-n'-rip-it reputation. "I was hitting balls miles. I had a 46-inch driver and a mad swing . . . now, I am technically better than I have ever been. There is an irony. When I got the technique, the passion was leaving."

So, has he closed the book? "No," he says, shaking his head. "There's a couple of pages open . . . there's nothing on them yet. I hate to say I've closed the book, it'd nearly put me into tears. But I would hate to have to go back to play. I would immediately stress up.

"The finesse game leaves you. I can still drive the ball amazingly well, and after a couple of hours on the range I'm hitting darts . . . but the finesse game is another situation."

The book is not closed, and there may be blank pages left, but Coughlan's future is in teaching and not playing. And, you know what, he's happy. When he bumped into Justin Rose recently - who had played on the same Walker Cup team with him - the Englishman threw his arms around him and talked and talked and talked. Finally, Rose asked him if he was happy. And Coughlan could tell him he was.