He's done it all as an amateur - made it to world No 1 and won the English Amateur - and after top-10 finishes in Johannesburg and Abu Dhabi this season his confidence is high.

"I've worked hard for the last couple of years now," Willett told Golf Night. "I went to college for a couple of years and made a decision to stop that to try and get in the Walker Cup team and to try and try and turn pro at the backend of last year.

"Nicely enough for me it all fell into place perfectly. Graham and I worked really hard and I had a brilliant summer. I got into the team fairly late with a really good run that summer.

"I knew quite a few lads in the team and we had a great week. There were probably 12,000 people supporting us. I know we didn't win but the experience was awesome.

"Rory was always a pretty special golfer to be fair; he got his card in two starts when he was 17 or 18, then his first year on tour was really good and his start this year has been phenomenal."

Winning

Danny has worked for many years with his highly-regarded coach Graham Walker, who he met through Yorkshire county training, and is clearly in good hands.

"Dan was in the Yorkshire intermediary squad at the age of about 15; he was two handicap, didn't swing it as well as I would have liked him to swing it at the time," recalled Walker.

"I gave him some advice - he enjoyed it, he liked it and kept coming back for more and more. Then after a couple of years he made it into an England regional boys' squad, then into the England U18s and started to do really well. Oliver Fisher was in the same squad.

"Then he went to America for a couple of years but we kept in touch all of the time.

"It's all about winning with him; he's not too interested about finishing further down the field. He loves to win so when he sees his name at the top of the board he's really, really happy. When he sees it down the bottom he is as miserable as sin so he really needs to work well and get his name up the board then he's happy.

"We've not seen the best of him yet - there's much more to come - but he knows that as well. I'm looking forward to when he gets up there in the lead in a big tournament and then we'll see how he handles the pressure but I'm sure he'll handle it really well."

Standard

Danny spends a lot of time at The Oaks Golf Club, where Walker's academy is based; the facilities allow him to work on all aspects of his game and the two are firm friends on and off the course.

"Graham is a great guy. We've got a lot of time for each other. We are very honest in how we work and nothing is ever left unturned. We always tell it how it is. It's a good working relationship but then off the golf course we can have a normal chat - it doesn't have to be golf.

"Through the season now I'm in my first year on tour it's very difficult to get a really good workout plan in place because you don't want to wake up the next day feeling really stiff yet having to go and play golf whereas as an amateur you had three months off in the winter so you could really hit the gym quite hard.

"I've worked a lot over the last years to try and bring my iron play and my driving up to the standard I think it should be at."