Showed nerves of steel in his final event of 2012, carding a final round 69 in the SA Open Championship to record his first top ten of the season and rise from 124th to the safety of 109th in The Race to Dubai. Took a while to adapt in his rookie season, but started to fulfil the promise he had shown by being the youngest player to win the Challenge Tour Rankings in 2011, aged 20 and 290 days, helped largely by his victory in the lucrative Kazakhstan Open. An illustrious amateur career ended with him being ranked at the top of the Scratch Players World Amateur Rankings, thanks to his victories at the English Amateur Championship and the Boys Home Internationals in 2010. Almost won on his Challenge Tour debut as an amateur at the English Challenge, where he finished second by one shot. Two more runner-up finishes followed after he had joined the professional ranks before he went one better in Kazakhstan, holding off the challenge of his fellow rookie Knut Borsheim of Norway to take the title by two shots. His victory propelled him to the top of the Challenge Tour Rankings, and another second-place finish, at the season-ending Apulia San Domenico Grand Final, confirmed him as the 2011 Challenge Tour Number One.