Brandon Robinson Thompson insists he will play without fear as he bids to retain his DP World Tour card at the season-ending Genesis Championship in South Korea.
The Englishman arrives at Woo Jeong Hills Country Club currently on the outside looking in, knowing a strong week could be enough to secure his place inside the top 100 on the Race to Dubai Rankings Delivered by DP World and retain Category 10 membership for next season.
At 109th in the Rankings, Robinson Thompson heads to Korea after ending a run of eight consecutive missed cuts with encouraging signs in both Spain and India, and is hoping that improved form can arrive at exactly the right time.
“I felt more like myself the last month, to be honest,” Robinson Thompson told the DP World Tour. “It’s coming.
“And even last week, there was some real good signs again of Brandon of old, I guess you could say. But yeah, it's definitely feeling that way. It's just unfortunate I've only got one event left in the season.”
The Englishman currently sits 50.48 points behind Viktor Hovland, who occupies the all-important 100th position but is already assured of his playing rights next season as a member of the 2025 European Ryder Cup team.
While a finish inside the top 25 is likely to put Robinson Thompson inside the cut-off, there are plenty of others behind him also trying to make their own late move.
Those permutations are not something he has spent much time considering, believing they add little to what he is trying to achieve on the golf course.
“I'm not afraid of what I need to do,” he said.
“Like I don't, if I've got to finish fifth to keep my card, I'm not afraid of the fact that, okay, I need to finish fifth to keep my card, but the reason that I play this game is to be better and it's to enjoy it. And I want to compete.
“And it's like knowing where I need to finish is not going to help that, you know? Would it hinder it? Probably not, but it's not going to help me. So it doesn't really matter to me.
“At the end of the day, we're all for the most part trying to win golf tournaments, which again is just a by-product of doing things really well.”
Robinson Thompson's outlook has likely been shaped by the journey it took to reach this point.
A professional since 2017, he spent several years working his way through the ranks before finding his stride on the HotelPlanner Tour. After narrowly missing promotion in 2023, he secured a second victory the following season to earn his DP World Tour card before going on to qualify for the season-ending DP World Tour Championship in 2025.
That breakthrough campaign featured a runner-up finish at the Commercial Bank Qatar Masters and three further top tens, as well as a Sunday tee time alongside Rory McIlroy.
This year has been, in his own words, more of a “D-plus” season, but his memories of what it took to reach the DP World Tour continue to fuel his confidence.
“I'd describe it as a learning curve, for sure,” he said.
“Obviously, if we go based on results and stuff, it's probably not a passing grade so far. So I'd probably have to go like a D-plus.
“I haven't quite played and competed how I'd like to. I don't want to say disappointing, but it probably is a little disappointing. I've missed quite a few cuts by like one or two, it's just sort of been close. It's just obviously been not quite good enough.”
Near misses have shaped much of his season, and he believes the results have often failed to reflect how close he has been to playing his best golf.
After opening his year with a tie for 32nd at the Alfred Dunhill Championship, he missed his next six cuts in a row before producing one of the standout performances of his campaign with a runner-up finish in Qatar. Since then, with his wife on the bag providing crucial support, he's had further mixed fortunes, missing 11 of 12 cuts after the KLM Open before making the weekend in his two most recent starts.
“There’s so much more to what everyone sees, which is just like the end product,” he said.
“Even when people see you miss four, five, six cuts in a row, there's so much more to it than that. Like the first five cuts of the season, I missed by one shot.
“It might be close, you might feel quite good. And then all of a sudden you've got to wait like another week to get at it again. And it's quite deflating at times. Doing that like eight weeks in a row is pretty brutal to be fair.”
“[But] you know, there's a lot of good golf in there and one or two of those, you make it by one and then all of a sudden you have a great weekend and everybody's forgotten about it.
“So I think if you know and you believe that you're doing the right things and you can, you know, inside, like you kind of know whether it's sort of coming.
“And even last week, there was some real good signs again of Brandon of old, I guess you could say. But yeah, it's definitely feeling that way. We are where we are and I do feel quite good about it.”
Now heading into this week with a big task at hand to extend his status on golf's Global Tour, the 34-year-old is taking inspiration from what was achieved by Marco Penge in 2024 and Jordan Gumberg's dramatic hole-out eagle to retain his card last season,
“I think I actually remember watching Jordan hole out last year and thinking how cool is that?” he said.
“That's sick. I didn't think it was possible. Stuff like that, it helps you sort of go, ‘oh, it's possible’, you know? No matter what happens, there's always a chance. As long as I'm on the golf course, there's a chance.”
And when Thursday morning arrives, with a season's worth of work resting on four rounds in Korea, his message to himself will remain unchanged.
“It would just be pretty much what I tell myself every week,” he said. “Let's go have fun and compete.”
