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My route to the tour
How I've made it to the professional game
WITH this being my first column it is probably best to give you a little bit of background to how I ended up on the European Tour.
After graduating from the University of Tennessee, and winning the English Amateur where I met Oliver Fisher in the final at Burnham and Berrow, I turned professional at the end of 2006.
I spent my first year on the Challenge Tour, managed to win a couple of events and ended the year in second spot on the standings to graduate on to the main tour.
My first season was solid enough, and I played in my first Major in the US Open at Torrey Pines, and last season was a real breakthrough year.
At the start of the season my goal was to end up inside the top 15 on the Race to Dubai and, after a big end to the year where I finished inside the top six on four my last six starts, I reached my original target in 12th spot.
Needless to say, the big highlight of 2009 was my first win, at the Madrid Masters. I would like to think that it didn’t come as too big a surprise.
I was playing well going into the tournament, though to throw in a 60, playing alongside Sergio Garcia, on the Saturday was particularly satisfying.
Obviously I knew I was going pretty well but it was only when I hit my approach to the last that I realised that, had it somehow gone in, which might have been pushing it from around 240 yards, that I would have shot 59.
My first season was solid enough, and I played in my first Major in the US Open at Torrey Pines, and last season was a real breakthrough year.
To have a lead of seven is fantastic; to have that trimmed down to two with four to play is less good.
I managed to run out a three-shot winner although I kept things nice and interesting by having to play my third to the 72nd hole off some greenside wooden sleepers.
Maybe because of having such a big lead, or maybe it was because I had been playing so well, but there wasn’t quite the exhilaration that I thought there would be and, if anything, it has made me even more determined to keep making more progress.
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