Fred Parlby will head to the Royal Automobile Club’s Old Course for the final MENA Golf Tour Q-School with one clear objective: secure his playing rights for the season ahead and build on the lessons of his first year as a professional.
Having turned professional last year, Parlby got his first taste of Tour life on the MENA Golf Tour, competing across a range of venues and conditions as he made the transition from the amateur and college game. With a full season now behind him, the young Englishman feels his game and mindset are heading in the right direction.
“I picked the RAC because it’s nearest to me – only around two and a half to three hours away,” said Palby. “It’s a good opportunity to get into that top ten and secure my card for the year on the MENA Golf Tour.
“I played DP World Tour Q-School as well and thought I performed quite well, but just didn’t quite get over the mark. So why not keep going and give myself another opportunity to earn a card on the MENA Golf Tour?”
A first year of learning
Parlby is the first to admit his rookie season hasn’t always gone to plan, but there have been enough encouraging signs to give him confidence heading into year two.
“It’s been a bit of a rough season, but it was my first full year as a professional and there have been plenty of positives,” he said. “Especially at the start of the year on the MENA Golf Tour – I made the cut in my last three events and played some decent golf. Then we went onto the Clutch Tour and there were a few decent results there too, although not quite what I wanted.
“With golf you never really know when it’s all going to come together, so you just have to keep going.”
The Tour also exceeded his expectations off the course. “I was expecting it to be good and professional, but it actually exceeded my expectations, especially with the way it was run,” he said. “The courses we played were great. I’d never really played in countries such as Egypt and Morocco before, so I really enjoyed that side of it as well.”
Travelling with a close friend, Ollie Sullivan, helped him settle into the rhythms of Tour life – hotels, practice rounds, unfamiliar courses and constantly changing conditions. “It was a really good way of getting used to everything and understanding what was going to come during the rest of the season,” he said. That experience should prove valuable again, with several familiar venues from this year’s schedule awaiting him at Q-School.
Learning from experienced professionals
One of the biggest benefits of Palby’s rookie season was competing alongside players with far more experience, among them former Ryder Cup player and DP World Tour winner Chris Wood.
“Playing with players like Chris Wood and some of the HotelPlanner Tour guys was massive for me,” said Parlby. “A lot of those players were using the events to get ready for their own seasons, and I learned a lot just from watching how they play the game and approach tournaments. When you see that your game isn’t that far away, it gives you confidence – it makes you believe you can keep improving.”
Wood also taught him a lesson that had little to do with technique – how easy it is, amid spectacular venues and luxury resorts, to lose sight of why players are there. “You have to remember that you’re not on holiday – you’re at work,” Parlby said. “I watched someone like Chris Wood and he treated it exactly as though he was playing a DP World Tour event or a Major. He knows how to get the job done. It would be very easy to relax too much at these venues, but ultimately you’re there to work and perform.”
Preparation and the mental game
Three years of college golf in Florida gave Parlby experience on Bermuda greens, but he found the professional game demanded a different level of preparation.
“The greens in Morocco and Egypt were tricky because they were different to what I was used to,” he explained. “Playing on the MENA Golf Tour matured my mentality because it showed me how important preparation really is – getting your pace work done properly during practice rounds, rather than just hitting a few putts and hoping everything’s going to be okay.”
Just as important, he says, has been the mental side of the game. “My game has always been there or thereabouts from a ball-striking point of view, but sometimes my mental game can let me down a little bit. It’s about learning to calm down and relax before I play – everyone gets nervous, but it’s understanding how to deal with that. I’ve tried to pick the brains of more experienced players, and that’s helped me a lot throughout the season.”
His advice to his younger self is simple: “Free up a little and don’t put so much pressure on yourself. Don’t worry too much about what everybody else thinks – it’s about how you feel, how you think, and going out there and playing the best golf you can.”
The goalposts move in year two
That more relaxed mentality doesn’t mean Parlby is lowering his ambitions.
“I still want to freewheel a little because it’s early days in my career,” he said. “But the goals and the goalposts move. I want to make more cuts, start getting top tens, and go into these events believing I can win them. Otherwise, there would be no point turning up.”
The first task is Q-School. A strong performance on the Old Course would secure Palby the playing rights he wants for the season ahead – and a return to the venues where his professional education began, this time with 12 months of experience behind him.
