Rasmus Neergaard-Petersen is not just making his own dreams come true this week as he heads down Magnolia Lane for his Masters debut.
The latest in a long line of Danes to recently rise to the top of the international game, Neergaard-Petersen is coached by Andreas Kali, head coach of the Danish Junior Golf Academy which has helped produce a string of professional stars.
In over a decade of working with Kali, Neergaard Petersen has won his national junior championship and since turning professional has triumphed three times on the HotelPlanner Tour and lifted the trophy at the Crown Australian Open to earn his place in the field this week.
And while his rise in the professional game has been rapid, the 26-year-old is fully aware the work behind it has been long and hard and he is delighted to be sharing his Masters experience with Kali.
“I have my coach here this week who I have worked with for 15 years and kind of one of the visions back in the day when they started up the Danish Golf Academy was get players on tour and get players to play Majors,” said Neergaard-Petersen, one of three Danes in the field this week along with the Højgaard twins, Rasmus and Nicolai.
“I told him this morning, because this is his first time out here as well, that it's pretty fun to look back at what was once a vision and is now a reality.
“I think it's down to all the work the Danish Junior Golf Academy and the National Team have done over the past ten, 15 years. It's just one of those things that's super exciting to see a record amount of not only Danes, but people from Scandinavia in general.”
While teeing it up at the first Major of the year may be an all new experience for Neergaard-Petersen, he is trying his best not to be over-awed by the trappings of Augusta National.
No rookie has won the Masters since 1979, with the layout famed for being one that needs to be learned before it can truly hand out rewards.
Neergaard Petersen, however, is leaving no stone unturned in his mission to end that run, relying on his experience of playing in Denmark and a little help from his friends.
“It's been a dream of mine since I was very little,” he said of playing this week. “I'm not sure if it was the first event I watched on TV but it's the first event I remember watching thinking that someday I would really like to play in that event.
"Yeah, dream come true for me this week. Got play the whole 18 yesterday and it was love at first sight. Absolutely super, super excited and happy to be here and looking forward for a great week.”
He added: “I spent the last week in Oklahoma where I went to college. You know, had a great team of staff out there so they were able to speed up the greens for me and had me prepping on slopey greens.
“So I spent a lot of time doing that and then being here as a rookie there is so many small intricacies to the course. I have three, four days to learn what other players who have been playing here ten or 20 times know.
“So obviously a busy couple days for me trying to learn the golf course, but it's another exciting thing about coming to new places, especially a place like that.
“It's pretty windy in Denmark. Funny enough there was a lot of guys when I first got to college that asked me if I'd got used to the Oklahoma wind yet and I said, ‘well, it's like that all the time at home, so yeah’. The more wind the better.
“I always want to have a general idea where the wind should be above the pines. There are so many holes with the super tall pines the wind really swirls.
“It's about figuring out, if you can't quite decide if it's helping or might not be helping, ‘OK what wind should I play for?’.
“So in case you get the wind wrong you end up in it an OK spot rather than playing for a certain wind and then the wind might be different and you end up in is spot you can't be.”
