When did you realise that you could make golf your profession?
I was always thought I had an edge for the game, even in my younger days, but it took me a bit longer than others to realise just how far that edge went. I was always playing off plus handicap at sort of 14, 15 years old so I understood that I had the potential but it took me long to get any further.
I found it quite frustrating watching guys I grew up with getting out there on tour 3 or 4 years before me. However, I never wanted to try until I started winning big amateur events, I said to myself “If I can’t win these big amateur events, how am I going to stand up against the guys on tour?”
I waited and bided my time. Then I got to 22 and things weren’t going that well and my mum made me get a job in the local supermarket and I think after the four weeks of working there, I thought to myself — there is no way I wanted to spend the rest of my life working there. I decided to really knuckle down. My family weren’t of the wealthiest background so they said that they would help me up to a certain point but that they couldn’t support me. Just in the sense that I didn’t want to be doing that for the rest of my life, I knew what I wanted to do. It gave me a lot of clarity, a lot of vision and a lot of drive as well.