Scan the list of Irish winners on what is now called the DP World Tour, and it's a litany of legends – Christy O'Connor Snr (24 wins), Pádraig Harrington (15), Darren Clarke and Rory McIlroy (14 each), Graeme McDowell (11), Des Smyth (8), Fred Daly (7) and Ronan Rafferty (7).
Then on five come another four great champions – the great Harry Bradshaw, David Feherty, 2019 Open champion Shane Lowry and Michael Hoey.
Hoey also won three times on the Challenge Tour, but after a 20-year career, and at the relatively young age of 43, he's now called time on those 4am trips to the airport and decided, after 469 professional events, to become a European Tour referee.
This was no knee jerk reaction by a player frustrated by the never-ending, dog-eat-dog grind of tour life but a meditated decision brought on by ever-increasing competition and the unforgiving financial realities brought home by the COVID-19 pandemic.
For an Irish golf writer looking for an insight into the realities of tour life, Hoey was always brutally honest about his triumphs and, more frequently, his struggles. It was a trait that made him the most relatable of all Irish stars.
After spending just less than two years at Clemson University – “I wasn't improving, my swing was getting worse; American college golf isn't great for technical coaching in general, but it's good for competition,” he said – he came home and won the Amateur Championship at Prestwick in 2001, going on to help Great Britain and Ireland retain the Walker Cup at Sea Island later that year.
His teammates included Luke Donald and Graeme McDowell, but it would be another eight years before Hoey won his first European Tour title, the 2009 Estoril Open, at age 30.
“I was thinking about the next 15 years, not the next two years. Released from captivity!”
Michael Hoey
He'd finally realised his potential, but he admits he would cringe with embarrassment when US Open champion McDowell – who nicknamed him Mágico for his wonderful short game skills honed on summer holidays on the Causeway Coast links – called him “world-class.”
“It would get back to me that Graeme had said something really nice about me being world-class and having massive potential, which was nice, but it was hard to back up when you are missing cuts and skint,” Hoey said after he won the 2011 Madeira Islands Open.
His biggest win would come a few months later in the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews, where he finished birdie-birdie-par-birdie to beat Rory McIlroy by two shots and McDowell by three.
He would rise as high as 74th in the world rankings in 2012, but after winning the Russian Open in 2013, he never won again, admitting his putting was too erratic to truly hope to match the feats of a Donald or a McDowell.
Fast forward 11 years and Hoey secured some European Tour status at the end of last year but knew he’d be taking on hungry and progressively younger guns from all corners of the world with no sponsor, a very weak card, implacable expenses of €40,000 a year and a young family at home.
Having enquired about becoming a referee after a failed trip to the Qualifying School in Spain at the end of 2019, even going as far as to spend two days learning the ropes having missed the cut that week, he didn't have to think twice when the call came from Wentworth asking if he was available for interview.
“I was thinking about the next 15 years, not the next two years,” he told the NI Golf Podcast, adding with a chuckle: “Released from captivity!”
He’d thought about the move during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 when he took a job with couriers DHL to make ends meet at a time when “the tour had restructured and fired 65 staff.”
Those financial problems have since been alleviated by the investment by the PGA Tour and DP World, and so Hoey headed off to South Africa at the weekend for his first stint in the field as a referee.
He’s looking forward to the camaraderie amongst the tour staff, having found the players have become more insular, the competition more ferocious and the game itself more “one-dimensional.”
“It's selfish and ruthless out there now,” he told NI Podcast presenter Paul Kelly. “The Irish still go to dinner, but it would’ve been way more of a family back in the day with a lot of characters like (Philip) Walton and Christy (O'Connor) Jnr. Now it’s more of an individual game and it’s quite selfish.”
Hoey has had his fair share of rules disasters over the years but always had huge respect for the officials forced to give players bad news when struggling to make a cut.
“We all know it’s one of the hardest games in the world and if a player is not doing well or they are near the cut line and if there’s an embedded ball and it’s borderline, that’s a tough decision,” he said.
“I had one with Mickelson actually in Singapore (in 2010). The ball was almost embedded in Bermuda grass and I didn't get a referee over and I said, ‘Phil, what do you think?’”
A talented mimic, Hoey does his best Phil impression: “He just said, ‘I just think you got screwed with the lie.’ Sometimes, you just have to take it on the chin.”
After assessing the lie of the land on tour, Hoey had no desire to take it on the chin any more and he’s looking forward to a new challenge among new colleagues, safe in the knowledge that most of his peers are no longer on tour looking for embedded ball relief late on a Friday afternoon.
Brian Keogh