Dining at the TOP TABLE

Aaron Rai's Wyndham Championship victory has elevated his career to a new level. But, as he tells David Facey, he's taking nothing for granted...

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Aaron Rai could easily be the most grounded, least excitable player in all of golf. So, when he describes his breakthrough victory on the PGA Tour as “potentially life-changing”, you know it is not just hype.

As well as securing the English golfer a cheque for more than $1.4million, Rai’s two-shot victory at the Wyndham Championship earned him a two-year extension on his PGA Tour card, and automatic entry into all of the Signature Events in 2025.

Oh, and a first trip to The Masters, a prospect which has got even the seemingly unflappable Rai fighting to contain his excitement. But despite all those rewards for his wire-to-wire win in Greensboro, North Carolina, it is a triumph that will never rank as the one he cherishes most.

That distinction belongs to the first of his three Challenge Tour victories in 2017 at the Barclays Kenya Open, which earned him only a fraction of his Wyndham winnings. The first prize in Nairobi was a mere €35,200 and that is around one fortieth of his Wyndham windfall.

But it was achieved with his Kenyan-born mother, Dalvir, waiting to greet him on the 18th green on her first trip back to her birthplace in almost 50 years. The country’s president, Uhuru Kenyatta, had arrived at the Muthaiga Golf Club with a few holes remaining after being told ‘one of our own’ was doing something special. And it was Mother’s Day in the UK. Mother and son both burst into tears as they hugged each other after Rai clinched his three-shot victory.

The 29-year-old says, “I think that in terms of pure golfing achievement, and as a staging post in the whole journey I’ve been on as a professional golfer, the Wyndham win is by far the high point of my career so far.