Back in 2004, he wasn't sure if he rated the player he saw in the mirror. A thirtysomething who wanted more than European Tour journeyman status. He wasn't going anywhere fast enough and he needed to change.

Like Padraig Harrington, Paul McGinley and a clutch of leading pros before him, Murphy turned to Bob Torrance, the grizzled, weather-beaten swing sage from the west coast of Scotland. Father of Sam, architect of champions.

In order to get where he wanted to, Torrance reckoned that Murphy needed to reduce his reliance on hands and feel, and to make more use of the body's larger muscles. That meant alterations to both backswing and downswing, and Murphy would also go from being predominantly a fader of the ball to hitting it from right to left.

It might have been a novelty factor, but initially the changes worked. Then they didn't work so well, and then Murphy felt like he'd forgotten how to swing the club. By the start of this year, he was in a deep hole.

"My head was absolutely scrambled. I was sliding into the abyss. It was no fault of Bob's, I just couldn't do what was required. Before I went to him, everything should've been telling me that my ballstriking was just fine, but I still wanted something new. It was more my short game, and my mental focus and attitude that needed to be improved. Maybe I was camouflaging that by convincing myself I needed to change my swing."

Outside of golf, life was good. His wife Elaine had given birth to Holly in the spring, and there was a new house in the offing in Kilkenny city. A fortnight ago, Murphy signed off on the mortgage with just the slightest quiver in his hand. He knew that within a few days, he might be out of a job.

His season in the doldrums had come down to the final tournament. He would go to Majorca in 118th place in the Order of Merit, and the way the numbers had been crunched, 118 players would retain their cards. Ahead of him, he had a group determined to hold on. Behind him, another group desperate to survive.

"You know that feeling when you're leaning back in a chair, and you're not quite sure when it's going to fall.

You lose your card, and your potential income is cut by 70 to 80 per cent overnight. You have contracts which might not be honoured, your sponsors are having second thoughts."

With such a lack of confidence in his swing, Murphy had a bad feeling about the year. He would graft his way through a few tournaments, make a few bob, and then miss a series of cuts with depressing consistency.

There were four in a row between the end of December and the beginning of February, three in a row in May and June, and four more in July and August.

Against the odds, something clicked at the Russian Open, where he finished joint third. In fact, Murphy might even have won if his approach to the 15th hole, which looked to be stone dead, hadn't hit the flagstick and ricocheted into the water.

"I won about 45,000, and in terms of my card, the pressure had eased considerably.

I thought at that stage I was over the line." But he would miss the cut at the next four events, including the potentially lucrative Dunhill Links, and now judgement day loomed in Majorca.

The week before the tournament, Paul McGinley had been poring over the Order of Merit and saw that Murphy was hanging on by his fingernails. He got on the phone.

"Anything I can do for you, Murph?" He wanted to know if Murphy was interested in coming over to Queenwood . . .

the exclusive club in Surrey where Darren Clarke and Thomas Bjorn are also members . . . to get in some practice.

In the end, Murphy decided to stay at home, but he appreciated the gesture and arranged to play a couple of practice rounds with McGinley and Bjorn in Majorca. "I got into the right sort of company, " he says.

The start was impressive, better than he could have expected. He followed the 66 with a 71 and then a 70 to share the lead with Niclas Fasth going into last Sunday's final round. His mindset had changed. One day, his European Tour future was on the line, the next, he was thinking about winning a tournament.

He was only three shots behind Fasth standing on the 15th tee, but he bogeyed, and then "chased" a long birdie putt at the next in an effort to redeem himself and rolled it five feet past. He missed the one back, and suddenly, he was in trouble.

"At that moment, all the thoughts about winning and keeping my card became jumbled. I knew the tournament was gone, and now I was thinking about my card, but not in a rational way. I was emotionally drained, I couldn't give any more. Out in the desert and I'm lost, panicking."

He bogeyed 17 in a fog, and then with his mind racing about how much money the players around him in the Order of Merit were making, found a bunker with his second shot into the last. Took two to get out, and somehow holed a 20-foot putt for a bogey.

"I was totally gone, I've no idea how that putt went in.

The goal all day had been to win, and to get into the Volvo Masters. It would've been an amazing finish to a very unsuccessful year. I tried to reset the goal on the 17th, and I just got confused. It was a horrible experience really"" In the end, those four bogeys killed off his hopes of making it hard for Fasth, who won comfortably, but the cheque for 26,000 moved him up to 104th place, and to safety. He had teetered on the brink, and hauled himself back.

Off the course, there was joy in his life. On it, he just about survived. Scarred or emboldened? Time will tell for Gary Murphy