From Ryder Cup high, Denison is just playing to stay on Tour

Danny Denison’s status as a European Tour player is slipping through his fingers.

The 27-year-old Leeds golfer is so far down the money list that from the remaining four tournaments he competes in he needs at least one victory to have any chance of retaining his card for next season.

A rookie year on tour has been every bit as tough as he anticipated it would be.

The biggest disappointment is that he has not grasped the opportunity when it came. And there were plenty of them.

Denison has played 23 tournaments so far but made it to the weekend only eight times. His highest finish is a tie for 22nd at the Nordea Masters in Sweden.In total he has earned 55,547 Euros (£44,527) and sits 181st on the Race to Dubai rankings. The top 115 retain their card for next season, and Denison trails that position by 108,000 Euros.

Effectively, he needs to at least treble his earnings for the year in the last four tournaments.

“I need to do something really dramatic to ensure I don’t have to go back to Tour school,” said Denison, whose attempts to save himself continue in Scotland this week.

“But that’s golf. It’s not the be all and end all if I’m not back on the European Tour next year.

“Obviously it’s where I want to be but if I have to go back to Tour school to get back there, then I will. And if not, there’s always the Challenge Tour which I have done well on before.”

Denison has yet to pledge his name to the gruelling demands of Tour school at the end of November, early December, when hundreds of players battle it out for just a couple-of-dozen European Tour cards.

This next three-week stint taking him from Scotland to Portugal to Australia leaves him with a modicum of hope that he won’t have to do that.

“I’ve just got to go out there and do my best,” said Denison, whose final tournament of the season is in South Africa next month. “I won’t change anything because I always play to win anyway.

“Second stage of Tour school is an option, but to be honest I don’t want to be thinking about that just yet.”

Such is the enormity of what he needs to do over the next few weeks, Denison is not too downbeat. The fact that he can pinpoint what has gone wrong this year offers him hope for the future.

“My short game has been poor,” he said. “That’s basically all I can put my finger on, and my scoring is suffering because of it.

“I’m not chipping it close enough and consequently I’m not holing enough putts.”

The mental aspect of competitive golf has also affected him. Having fought his way back from two years on the sidelines after surviving a near-fatal car crash in Austria in 2007, Denison thought he had the mental resolve to tackle anything.

Yet even the knowledge that golf is not a matter of life or death does not provide enough of a comfort blanket when a living has to be made from swinging a club.

“Next time I would handle myself better,” said Denison, who sought a psychologist’s opinion midway through the season.

“I got frustrated at myself early on in the season. The guy I’ve been seeing goes through my processes, asking me what I’m thinking at certain times. It’s about breaking it down and making it as simple as possible.

“It’s basically trying to keep everything on an even keel – that’s the type of thing I’ve got to work on.”

If he has step back to the Challenge Tour, which he graduated from in 2011, he is not afraid to do so.

Such a humbling experience should serve Denison well when, not if, he finds himself back among the continent’s elite.