'The key is staying positive' - Dan Bradbury heads into British Masters weekend hoping to rediscover winning touch

While giving you the security of knowing your season’s aim of securing playing privileges for the next two years has been achieved when prior to the tournament you didn’t even know where you’d be playing the following week, it can also imbue you with a false sense of what is realistic week after week.

Not that Wakefield’s Dan Bradbury is complaining that he won the Joburg Open last November in only the third tournament he’d ever played on the DP World Tour.

It was a wire-to-wire victory that was as stunning as it was unexpected, and opened up numerous doors for him that had not previously been considered – those two years of playing privileges for a start, and a spot in the field for next month’s Open Championship.

But eight months on, while ‘loving’ being part of the DP World Tour circus that criss-crosses the globe, Bradbury is adjusting to life on the continent’s premier circuit and the reality that it’s not as easy as that golden week back in November felt like.

"The key is staying positive,” Bradbury tells The Yorkshire Post from the front lawn of the clubhouse at the Belfry on Thursday, after an opening 75 left him battling to make the cut at the British Masters. “It’s a weird feeling knowing there’s 156 guys every week and 150 can win a tournament.

"You just know you’ve got to play well, count them up at the end and go and play well again the next week if it’s not enough.

"But to back it up four days in a row, there’s a lot of good players out here. If you don’t play well you can’t expect it to give you anything.”

The win coming so soon prompted a realignment of targets and allowed Bradbury to think bigger.

Coming off of five years in the US collegiate system where a winning mentality is drilled into you, the 23-year-old is not afraid to think big.

"I’ve already got enough points to secure my card for next year even if I didn’t have my exemption, so that’s not the goal now, the goal has changed and that’s to make it to Dubai at the end of the year," he said of the season-ending Dubai World Tour Championship in which the top 50 on the points list compete.

"Last year 1,000 points got you to Dubai, and 900 got you into the Nedbank Challenge (top 60 the week before), so I’m focusing on that thousand points, and at the minute I’m a couple shy of 600.

"There’s a few more big weeks coming up, Scottish Open and the Open as well.”

The Open is the icing on the cake, a major championship debut that the Wakefield Golf Club member is determined to enjoy.

"I’ve already sorted a house out, 15 to 20 minutes away. It’s cost a bit but you’ve got to do it properly," he smiles. "I just know I’ll be there from the start of the week to the end of the week, soaking it all up.”

He also wants to arrive at Royal Liverpool playing well. He has had only one top-10 finish since his breakthrough win and like the majority of players out there, is battling certain elements of his game.

"I’m playing better than I’m scoring,” counters Bradbury. “Last week was really frustrating in Germany, I felt rounds one and four I didn’t putt well so I’m not matching my game up, not getting it all right at the same time.

"It’s been more of the same at the Belfry. You can go out the next day, play the same, hit similar shots and shoot three or four under because the putts roll.

"So it’s a little frustrating but I can’t complain, I’m out here which I always wanted to be.”

He lived to fight another day at the Belfry, getting back to level par with three birdies on the front nine on Friday and building on it over the closing holes to post a second-round 67 that shot him up the leaderboard and into the weekend.

"I’ve realised that if I enjoy it I play better,” says Bradbury.

He is also learning to manage his time better.

Hyped on the adrenaline of his win in Joburg, he played five weeks in a row at the start of the year, eager to cram in as much of the experience as he could.

"I know that my weeks off and my time off has to be rest time," he says. “When I first came home I was playing here, playing there, I was doing too much in my weeks off so when I got back out here it didn’t feel like I’d had any time off.

"So now I’m trying to make sure I get the downtime I need.”

Harrogate’s John Parry birdied the last to sign for a 72 and give himself a chance of making the cut but it was one shot too many. North Yorkshire’s Dan Brown and Howley Hall’s Marcus Armitage both shot a pair of 73s to miss the weekend.