Deccy, I understand your situation, and would just say that, if you do stick it out, get a new driver and putter, and carry on playing, the fun will return to the game as you learn it better. It has a lot of depth and subtly, and can be a lot of fun. Snaike is right, you can easily get the creds to buy those from completing offers on the 'get credits' tab at the top of the page.
Snaike: The point is a lot of newcomers don't know that. They don't know how easy it is to progress to master by playing easier courses. There is no indication of how quickly it can happen when you join the game. Oak and Bethpage are really discouraging courses for beginners, so they mostly play St Andrews and Kiawah because they can play them. A lot, myself included, when they start playing, look at Oak and Beth and think, yeah, when I've got the hang of the game on St Andrews and Kiawah, I'll go on to try to learn those courses. I graduated to Master myself too early really, without trying to, I was just playing a lot of St Andrews, because I liked the course, and suddenly I was master. I adapted to this because I love the game, but many don't, they just leave.
I am not berating the game itself at all, I think it is great, but, there is no indication when you start playing the game, of how easy it is to become Master when not ready just by playing a lot of St Andrews 9-holes, unless the player spends hours searching through the forum for hints about it, and why should they do that? WGT doesn't advise players to do this when they join...
So the choice is not, as you say, Snaike, that of the player, the player is often just trying to improve their game, and the promotion happens without design or intention, when a player is skilled enough to get a good score at St Andrews, but not capable of good scores at Oak or Beth (of course as you know those courses are good preparation for promotion to the master tier).
Personally, I think it would be good if there was some indication when someone joins, of how the game difficulty progresses as you go up the tiers, and of the fact that really a player ought to play all courses in order to learn the game and prepare for the promotion.
Maybe it would be an idea to somehow link the promotion to playing all courses, perhaps limiting the number of times you could play St Andrews or Kiawah as an amateur or professional without playing Oak or Beth e.g. 5 rounds at St Andrews or Kiawah one would have to play 3 rounds at Oak and 3 at Beth (all ranked) before being allowed on StAndrews again.
Not sure of the solution, but I know a lot of players just quit the game because they hit master too early, which is a real shame, because they miss out on the pleasure of playing the game in real depth, and WGT misses out on the potential revenue they would have got from those players if they grew to love the game and invest some cash, and then the community suffers as it takes longer for the programme to evolve because revenue is not coming at the rate it could.
Of course, £30 isn't a lot to pay for a game these days, if one already knows they want the game. But the rapid and drastic change in difficulty in situations such as Deccy has experianced can really put people off the game.
Valrec