You get thrown off balance out there. And I never recovered. Well, I haven't recovered yet.

To be a top-class athlete, you have to train hard, you have to eat right, you have to get enough rest. I feel the way golf is going nowadays, you have to treat yourself as an athlete.

I think there came a time - probably when I was about 13 - when I started to struggle with an increasing volume of schoolwork and the demands from my golfing schedule and aspirations. I'm not sure if the decision to leave school was very clear in my mind then but I did know that in the juggling between the two, my energies were most definitely in the golfing direction.

I kept telling myself this word, process. Focus on my process, don't care about the result.

With success comes expectation, and I know the expectation on me is going to be pretty high.

My game wasn't where it should have been at all at the start of the year. I got into a couple of bad habits on my swing, and it just took me a little bit of time to get out of them.

I am a proud product of Irish golf and the Golfing Union of Ireland and am hugely honoured to have come from very rich Irish sporting roots I am also a proud Ulsterman who grew up in Northern Ireland. That is my background and always will be.