Yorkshire golf: Huddersfield pair Adam Walker and Aron Schnacke train sights on EuroPro Tour

The Huddersfield GC members will head to Mottram Hall in Cheshire for the 36-hole First Stage qualifying on March 30-31, intent on making it through to the Final Stage, which will be held over 54 holes at Frilford Heath GC in Oxfordshire.

Walker has been this way before, having qualified to play on the tour for the past two years, but for Schnacke it will be uncharted territory.

Twenty-four-year-old Walker combined playing on the EuroPro with caddying for Woodsome Hall's Chris Hanson last year in a season that saw Walker's employer graduate from the Challenge Tour to the European Tour.

Schnacke, 26, continued a successful amateur career that has seen him win multiple club events as well as Halifax and Huddersfield Union's match play and stroke play titles.

Now both want to test their skills on the EuroPro Tour, abundantly aware of the demands it will put on both their games and their financial resources.

Walker is a self-employed builder and runs his own company while Schnacke is a greenkeeper at West End GC.

They estimate it will cost around £650 each for every tournament entered, should they make it through the dual test awaiting them at Mottram Hall and Frilford Heath, but feel it is a price worth paying to gauge their standing as golfers.

Schnacke started playing golf when he was 16 and such was his aptitude for the game that his first handicap was just 12.

Walker, by contrast, admits he struggled for a couple of years after starting at a similar stage, unable to lower his handicap until “something suddenly clicked” and it quickly tumbled all the way to scratch.

As well as winning the club championship at Longley Park, in Huddersfield, five years in succession, he claimed the Dubai Summer Series title; his name is up on the honours board at Emirates GC, where Sheffield's Danny Willett won the Dubai Desert Classic this month.

What is spurring them on to invest heavily in themselves is not a desire to follow Willett's route to fame and fortune, but to compete at a level which they both know to be an accurate guide of golfing ability.

“Even if I only play two EuroPro events a year and have to take two weeks holiday out of my year I will enjoy them,” said Walker. “I would rather shoot 68 – or even 88 – in a pro event than in a medal.”

Schnacke, however, will miss the amateur scene should he earn his Tour card, but said: “I need to see really if I am good enough. Everyone tells me that I could compete and I just want to see if I can compete with these guys.

“I think I'm good enough and it is just a question of getting out there and doing it now to see if I can earn a bit of pocket money.”

The latter comment reflects the fact that prize money on the EuroPro Tour, while attractive, is not overwhelming.

It is approached by many as a stepping stone to the Challenge Tour and this, in turn, as a stepping stone to the European Tour. But both Walker and Schnacke are more concerned with testing themselves as golfers.

“The prize money is top-heavy so you need to be coming in the top 10 every week to make money - and the standard is so high it is unbelievable,” said Walker.

The top five players on the 2015 EuroPro Tour averaged £28,500 in winnings, but Walker estimates to play the full tour this season would cost between £12,000-£15,000.

“If they weren't doing it without some sort of backing, with sponsors, you could work in a supermarket and make the same kind of money,” he reasoned.

“I just love golf and I'm not keen on amateur golf, so I want to play the EuroPro Tour for enjoyment.”

A third Huddersfield GC member, former English Amateur champion Nick Marsh, will compete at Mottram Hall and both Walker and Schnacke are backing him to “breeze through” qualifying to claim a card.

Not that they won't be trying to equal or even better his scores, just as they have for some years, along with two other fine young amateurs at the club, Jake Hamilton and Josh Morton.

The quintet regularly play and practise together, constantly challenging one another to try to pull off difficult shots from the most unfavourable positions on both the course and the driving range.

“We will test one another, drop golf balls down in difficult places and see who can scramble the best,” said Walker, “and on the range we will see who can hit the lowest shot to a target or who can hit the highest, things like that.”

Schnacke said: “It has definitely helped my game, scrambling like that. It might appear to look as if we are just being silly on the driving range, but it really can help you pull off difficult shots out on the course.”

Both are fans of the late Seve Ballesteros, a player renowned for his adventurous play and remarkable recovery shots.

“Seve was the main man,” said Schnacke. “He used to play scrambling shots from all around the course, and I watch videos of him on YouTube and try to copy it.”

Walker concedes he can be wild off the tee and inclined towards the extravagant when trying to retrieve a situation from a position in the trees.

“I'll watch Nick from positions like that and his way is to chip out to yardage that he likes and then get up and down. Myself, I might try to still go for the birdie, and occasionally you lose a ball that way - but I like to try.”

Walker is no stranger to dealing with adverse circumstances; a detached retina has called for a number of operations including cryo-buckle surgery and he has lost peripheral vision in his left eye, making his prowess at golf all the more commendable.

“When I am really tired I get double vision, but the main difficulty as far as golf is concerned is distance control because my depth perception is way off,” he said.

Neither Walker nor Schnacke have any sponsorship, but would welcome any backing; they can be contacted by anyone interested in supporting them at [email protected] and [email protected] respectively.