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After Rafael Nadal's second in a Spanish amateur event we look at eight other athletes who play golf

Rafael Nadal

The tennis legend is the latest in a long line of sportsmen and sportswomen who have enjoyed trying to transfer their skills to the fairway.

In truth it wasn't even close, but Rafa Nadal did finish second in last week's Balearic Mid Amateur Men's Championship at Alcanada GC in Mallorca.
The tennis legend and recent winner of the Australian Open carded 74-77 to total 7-over 151, good enough to better all but one of the 82 man field.
But he was some way off first place, taken by DP World Tour referee Federico Paez Weinbaum's 5-under total of 139.
It's far from Nadal's first entry in top level amateur golf in his homeland - indeed, he's a frequent competitor at home in Mallorca.
Moreover, during his triumph in Melbourne last month, when Jim Courier asked him "What are the secrets to your fitness?" his answer was: "I play some golf. Honestly, and that's the truth, I have never been a gym guy."
The 35-year-old winner of 21 Grand Slam events is far from the first successful sportsman or woman to ponder the notion of branching out into golf.
Let's take a look at some other examples.

Yevgeny Kafelnikov

Like Nadal, a Grand Slam winner. In the Russian's case he won just the two, but he remains the 15th all-time leading money winner on the ATP and he put plenty of time into his golf.
He was encouraged by the willingness of Challenge (and some DP World) Tour events to use his participation for promotional purposes.
In all, he made 27 starts on the two circuits, most often in Russia and Kazakhstan. He didn't make one cut and had a stroke average of 81.21.

Andriy Shevchenko

The Ukrainian striker's golf took a big leap forward when he signed for Chelsea. He's played the Sunningdale Foursomes on more than one occasion and shot 84-86 in the Kharkov Superior Cup, a short-lived Ukrainian event on the Challenge Tour.

Scott Draper

Relatively little-known, but certainly not unsuccessful, the Aussie trumped Kafelnikov by winning in both sports.
He achieved little in the Grand Slams (individually at least), but did claim the 1998 Queen's Club Championship and, when he turned his hand to golf, he did so at the same time as winning the Australian Mixed Doubles with Sam Stosur - quite literally.
His golf pro debut was in the Victorian Open. He played the first round in the morning, won the semi-final of the tennis in the afternoon, he missed the cut in the golf next day, freeing him up to claim victory in the final on the Sunday.
He won a second tier Australian golf event before injury forced his retirement.

Stephen Grant

The Irish footballer was on the books at Celtic and Sunderland during a 10 year career that took him to 10 different clubs, winning four caps for his nation's under-21 team.
Also a successful businessman he retired at 27 to take up golf and has provided fascinating insight on the difficulties of his second profession.
Comparing the mental challenges he told his correspondent in 2012: "If I got angry on the pitch I could run harder, tackle harder, let my frustrations out. I can't do that in golf. Everything is internal. It's a huge mental challenge."
Grant has lived in Florida to pursue his dreams and was a regular practice partner of Brooks Koepka and Padraig Harrington. Blisteringly honest, he would say his capacity to shoot low numbers would escape him in tournaments - a failing he believes separates the wheat from the chaff.

Chloe Rogers

An ever-present in the bronze medal winning Team GB women's hockey team at the 2012 London Olympics, Rogers then turned her hand to golf.
Like Grant, she was able to make incisive observations about the differences in the two sports she had played.
"In hockey," she said, "when you cross the white line it's all reactive. There's little time to think about anything. In golf it's the absolute opposite."
She played a few times on the second tour of European golf before working at Celtic Manor and then becoming a tour rep for Titleist and Footjoy.

Shaun Murphy

A nine-time winner on the World Snooker Tour, including the 2005 World Championship, Murphy made an audacious bid to qualify for the 2019 Open through qualifying.
He'd caddied for a friend in the same event and when he got down to scratch felt he had to have a stab at the challenge.
He considered it something of a long shot to even make final qualifying and it proved prophetic after he carded an 84 at County Louth.
Two years later Murphy was dumped out of the first round of the UK Championship by an amateur snooker player and promptly harrumphed: "I am going to sound like a grumpy old man but that young man shouldn't be in the tournament. It is not fair, it is not right.
"I feel extremely hard done by that I have lost to someone who shouldn't even be in the building.
"I don't know why we as a sport allow amateurs to compete in professional tournaments. This is our livelihood."

Vera Shimanskaya

One of the great mysterious tales.
The winner of the gold medal for rhythmic gymnastics at the Sydney Olympics in 2000, the Russian turned to golf but was always remarkably enigmatic.
She made four starts on the Ladies European Tour in 2009, never breaking 80 in the first round and withdrawing three times.
Three failures to make the cut followed over the next five years, but she entered almost every event, even when having more or less no chance of even making the field.
She was last seen on the LPGA's second tier in 2016, carding a 90 ahead of yet another withdrawal, then 80-74 to miss her final cut.

Michael Phelps

The most decorated Olympic athlete of all time (28 medals, 16 golds) has no known aspirations to play golf professionally but not discussion such as this is complete without reference to his outlandish holed putt at the Dunhill Links.
The event is popular with ex-sportsmen, with cricketers Ian Botham, Allan Lamb, Michael Vaughan and Shane Warne especially keen, but none has enjoyed a moment as outstanding as Phelps'.

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