Role model's pain of having missed birdie, coming up short? (7)
I believe the answer is:
paragon
'role model's' is the definition.
(paragon is a kind of role model)
'missed birdie coming up short?' is the wordplay.
'missed birdie' becomes 'par' (I've seen this in another clue).
'coming up short?' becomes 'agon' (I can't justify this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'par'+'agon'='PARAGON'
'pain of having' acts as a link.
I am not very happy about this link. Some or all of it may be part of another bit of the clue.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for paragon that I've seen before include "Perfect type" , "Perfect diamond" , "Perfect embodiment of a concept" , "Exemplar" , "Role model" .)