![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/Jonathan-Yates-3-1024x683.jpeg\")
Jonathan Yates after his win on the Alps Tour.<\/p>\nBoth are 33, from the Midlands,\u00a0work in finance,\u00a0have young families,\u00a0and\u00a0are back in amateur golf having\u00a0spent\u00a0a number of\u00a0years\u00a0in Europe looking to make a career in the professional game.<\/p>\n
Now\u00a0Jonathan\u00a0Yates\u00a0wants to emulate his good friend Stuart Grehan and make a success of it, having watched him play in one Walker Cup and book his place at\u00a0another in\u00a0Lahinch next month.<\/p>\n
Grehan had a phenomenal 2025 which included a\u00a0Flogas\u00a0Irish Men\u2019s Amateur Open Championship and AIG Irish Men\u2019s Amateur Close title. This year\u2019s highlight was the\u00a0Amateur he won at Royal Liverpool.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s 10 years since Yates claimed his most noteworthy win on the amateur circuit in Ireland, when he was crowned West of Ireland champion at County Sligo Golf Club.<\/p>\n
He turned professional just over two years later and battled it out on the Alps Tour.\u00a0He won the Alps Tour Grand Final in\u00a02022 but the following year began his QFA exams and today he works in Ballsbridge with\u00a0LHW Financial Planning Ltd, where he is a Financial Advisor.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0funny, Stu and\u00a0I\u00a0were\u00a0both\u00a0playing on the Challenge Tour in 2023. At the start of that year, randomly, I\u00a0had been in touch with Alan Lewis,\u201d said\u00a0Yates.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u00a0is\u00a0the\u00a0former\u00a0Ireland\u00a0cricketer and\u00a0rugby referee.\u00a0He is my boss now and he is the\u00a0dream;\u00a0he\u00a0backs you and\u00a0loves to see guys compete and play sports. From that point of view,\u00a0I am very lucky\u00a0to have the flexibility.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe understood it\u00a0and\u00a0said, start getting my QFAs, get my qualifications, come in\u00a0and get\u00a0experience, but at the same time go and travel. I had my Challenge Tour card, had\u00a0status\u00a0and\u00a0travelled all year.<\/p>\n
\u201cStu and I were travelling together\u00a0and just naturally,\u00a0as you do when you are outside of golf, you are having dinner and chatting. I was telling him I am\u00a0doing QFAs and this is what it entailed.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know DFP, who are\u00a0very similar\u00a0to LHW, he ended up getting engaged with them and started on the same road. Ironically,\u00a0we both ended up in the same place. I am not sure, if travelling together and chatting about it had any influence on each other but we both ended up here.<\/p>\n
\u201cI did that and then at the end of the\u00a0year I lost my status and\u00a0I moved\u00a0into full-time employment.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yates\u00a0hails from Naas and he was a boarder at\u00a0Kilkenny College\u00a0where he played rugby and tennis. But he picked up golf when he was 12 and within a couple of\u00a0years,\u00a0was already playing off\u00a0scratch.<\/p>\n
However, it\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0until his late teens before golf became the main sport and after a year studying Psychology in Maynooth\u00a0University, he created a plan\u00a0with his then coach Gavin Lunny and that began to pay dividends.<\/p>\n
\u201cThings started happening. I won the Irish Students Stroke Play, soon after I won the Spanish Am, the Midlands Scratch Cup and then the West. Within six months, I started winning events and\u00a0they got bigger and bigger.<\/p>\n
\u201cUnfortunately, in 2016 I didn\u2019t\u00a0get selected for Homes\u00a0but I had a good\u00a0season. I had to wait a bit longer for an Irish cap\u00a0but by 2018 I played everything, Homes, six-man,\u00a0Nations\u00a0Cup\u00a0and the lot.<\/p>\n
\u201cDeveloped year on year, to a point where I felt I had done a lot in Irish golf. Then the next step for me\u00a0was\u00a0to get into the pro ranks and get that experience.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jonathan Yates after his win on the Alps Tour.<\/p>\n
Yates\u00a0went to Alps Tour Q-School in December 2018 and turned professional,\u00a0he had a busy schedule before the\u00a0Covid-19\u00a0impacted\u00a0season\u00a0that followed.\u00a0There were\u00a0still\u00a0signs of progress when he got the opportunity, and that was crowned off by his big win in\u00a0October\u00a02022.<\/p>\n
Away from the course he began to study\u00a0at Ireland\u2019s professional body for the finance profession, LIA in May 2023.\u00a0He later took up a Level 9 at UCD where he focused on Financial Planning Risk Advice, Retirement Planning Advice, and Specialist Investment Advice.<\/p>\n
He got married two years ago to\u00a0Katie Mai McCarthy and they welcomed their first child last year, when Archie McCarthy-Yates\u00a0was born.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat changed things. I didn\u2019t\u00a0have as much time to travel and\u00a0didn\u2019t\u00a0want it as well, to leave her stuck and me to go off and travel, that wasn\u2019t\u00a0what I wanted,\u201d said\u00a0Yates.<\/p>\n
\u201cI had been playing\u00a0so well but having no access to events, I\u00a0got fed up not playing in my best years. I got\u00a0home from the golf course one day\u00a0and I just pulled the trigger on it.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like, you know what, all I want\u00a0to do is compete. I just want to get\u00a0out there; I\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0necessarily care where it is. I just want to play and right\u00a0now\u00a0the best access for me to play is amateur events.\u201d<\/p>\n
It had been six months since his\u00a0last professional event when\u00a0Yates\u00a0applied to get his handicap back in May. He got that in June and played his first amateur event at the Mullingar Scratch Trophy. Now playing out of Kilkenny, he finished T15 on one-under par.<\/p>\n
This week he is in Portumna for the AIG Irish Men\u2019s Amateur Close Championship,\u00a0where he will hope to dethrone Grehan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am\u00a0looking forward to getting back, competing. If my golf is good enough so be it but it certainly won\u2019t\u00a0be for lack of trying,\u201d said\u00a0Yates.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s\u00a0a funny\u00a0one,\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0a pity\u00a0some\u00a0people are\u00a0looking at Stu\u2019s win (the\u00a0Amateur)\u00a0negatively. At the end of the day,\u00a0he\u00a0has eluded\u00a0to this himself, all Stu wants to do and all I want to do is play golf.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf the avenue isn\u2019t\u00a0there or financially,\u00a0we\u00a0are not able to\u00a0afford being on the road playing professional events, or\u00a0because of family\u00a0or whatever it might be.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor me, the opportunity to play golf now is as an amateur. If that\u00a0wasn\u2019t\u00a0there because the rules were changed it would be such a pity. Why deny\u00a0people the opportunity to play when we are just following the rules that are in place.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you apply to go back amateur, you put in an application to\u00a0The\u00a0R&A, and it goes in front of a board,\u00a0and they make a\u00a0decision\u00a0on it. What else can you do?<\/p>\n
\u201cIf I do half of what Stu has done,\u00a0I will be very\u00a0satisfied. If people want to\u00a0comment\u00a0that\u2019s\u00a0up\u00a0to them.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Both are 33, from the Midlands,\u00a0work in finance,\u00a0have young families,\u00a0and\u00a0are back in amateur golf having\u00a0spent\u00a0a number of\u00a0years\u00a0in Europe…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":49728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[19266,44,654,19293],"class_list":["post-49727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-aig-irish-amateur-close","tag-golf","tag-golf-ireland","tag-jonathan-yates"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/49728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/golf\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}