Stefano Mazzoli knows he will be looking up at the world's best when he begins his first full season as a dual member in 2027 – and that is just the way he likes it.
The Italian was 424th in the Official World Golf Ranking and 121st on the Race to Dubai Rankings Delivered by DP World when he arrived in the Caribbean for the Corales Puntacana Championship in the summer.
A week later he was a DP World and PGA Tour winner with the ability to plan his schedule and potentially accrue the points that could get him into Major Championships, the Ryder Cup and beyond.
It is all a far cry from his days scrapping on the Alps Tour, struggling to establish himself on the HotelPlanner Tour and even heading to the Asian Tour in pursuit of his goals.
His journey may have been winding, but throughout it has been one core principle: look at the player better than you and make yourself better than him.
"My journey in golf has always been to try and reach the guys around me that were better than me," he said ahead of making his DP World Tour Play-Off debut at the Abu Dhabi Aldar Championship.
"Obviously I looked up to Tiger and those guys growing up, but I picked up golf with my friends at school. They were better than me in the moment and I was trying to reach their level.
"Once I reached their level I was trying to reach the guys on the national team and then so on with the other guys on tour and all of that.
"Once you are in college, you kind of do the same. You look up to the better guys in the team and then once you're the better guy on the team, you try to chase the other guys outside your team.
"So I kind of like step by step. It's been a nice journey and hopefully I can keep doing it the same way."
It is a journey that began in the mountains of northern Italy, as Mazzoli held dreams of being a professional skiier with golf not really on his mind until he reached high school.
However, the demands of travel, leaving home young and injuries saw him swap the slopes for the tee box.
"Every sport I've done, I've always tried to do it really professionally from a young age and been really competitive," he said.
"I was actually a skier before, doing racing and competitive stuff. I wasn't playing golf at an early age but then the skiing was becoming really demanding in terms of going to the mountains because I lived two hours away and was going back and forth every weekend.
"I thought skiing was going to be my life when I was 12. But I was probably going to have to go to live in the mountains alone when I was 12 or 13 and it was a big change, I was probably not ready for it. So with my family, we decided just to change sport, it made sense.
"All my friends from school were all playing golf from right next to where I grew up close to Lake Como and that's when I kind of picked it up.
"I started probably when I was 12 or 13 and then I picked it up when I left skiing around 15 and then started playing more seriously when I was 16 when I wanted to go to college."
College would be four years at Texas Christian University, but before that came a European amateur career that saw him play alongside countrymen and future DP World Tour winners Renato Paratore and Guido Migliozzi and against the best young talent on the continent.
In the summer before he went to the United States, he headed to Slovakia for the European Amateur, an event previously won by the likes of Sergio Garcia and Rory McIlroy.
And on the biggest stage of his career so far, he looked at the quality around him and beat it.
"It's similar to the win I had this year," he said. "I've always thought that I was like the underdog guy. I knew I had it in me, but I never knew that it was there that early in that environment.
"That was a big stage in amateur golf, with a really good field. If you go back and look at the names that played there, there's so many big names that now are playing consistently here on tour.
I'm fairly young still and I'm excited for the journey of improving every day
"I feel like I kind of did the same this year. I knew I had it in me, but it wasn't expected."
That earned him an Open – and so far only Major - appearance in 2016 and while that was "awesome", Mazzoli admits a lack of experience hindered him at Royal Troon.
"I wish I could have been a little more mature," he said. "I basically picked up golf kind of late, I kind of skipped all that big part of international golf when you're an amateur.
"So I probably wasn't mature enough. It was probably my third time on a links course and all the conditions and all of that. I was not ready for it, but obviously it's a week that will be cherished for my entire life and I wish I can repeat and be more ready."
College golf saw him make the semi-finals for the Jack Nicklaus Award and play in the Arnold Palmer Cup before joining the paid ranks upon graduation.
Success came quickly with a maiden professional win on the Alps Tour at the 2020 Red Sea Little Venice Open but shortly after came the Covid-19 pandemic, turning professional golf and everything else on its head.
With the number of HotelPlannner cards available via the Alps Tour cut to three, Mazzoli missed out on graduation by one spot and the following season, despite winning his second title, he again fell just short.
A third consecutive season with a win came in 2022 and finally he was on the HotelPlanner Tour, but he would finish 130th on the Rankings.
Mazzoli, however, is philosophical when talking about those disappointments, using them not only as a learning curve but choosing to take the positives from life away from the course.
"I feel like coming out of college I was coming out pretty hot and I had that first win on the Alps Tour and then everything shut down and that kind of threw me under the bus," he said.
"I had a couple of injuries but I kept playing well but just missed out on Alps Tour again with a win. It was pretty tough because I knew I was better than that.
"It was just tough as it seemed like a lot of things were going against me: the injuries, Covid and all of that.
"But then it was really good to see that I was really determined. I know things sometimes seem to go against you, but I always show that I can change and flip the coin somehow.
"There's other things than golf that can affect your play. And 2023 was a big change for me, like a lot of negative stuff on the course.
"But I got married, my wife moved with me from the US and things started to shift in my way, and I think sometimes everything goes together and putting in some order on everything else outside the course sometimes makes it easier on the course."
With limited starts available on the HotelPlanner Tour and little desire to return to the Alps Tour, Mazzoli took a giant leap and decided to try his hand in Asia.
The lure of strong fields in the International Series and the chance to play regularly took him east and in 2024 he was named Asian Tour Rookie of the Year.
The Asian Tour is not a common destination for Europeans and while Mazzoli played only one full season, he is grateful for the experience.
"They had the International Series, a lot of major players are playing those tournaments and I thought qualifying was going to give me a good chance to play in those tournaments and was going to get me better as a player, which ultimately is what I did," he said.
"I think those tournaments are what made me believe in myself that I had the capabilities to play at this level. I kind of realised that when I'm playing well I'm able to compete at that level. My experience in Asia was great.
"Cultural-wise, I discovered some great places where I really had a great time and I also got to spend time during the tournaments with my wife.
"My first year I had a great season, obviously I could have been better, but I felt like I was starting to compete consistently better and I finished 25th on the Order of Merit but even if I finished like tenth, there was no next level from there, no pathway to a better tour."
A hybrid schedule would follow in 2025, but three top tens from his first five HotelPlanner starts gave him a platform from which to build and he would miss just one cut across the season.
He entered the Grand Final 18th on the Road to Mallorca and in a scrap for graduation but finished second in Spain to comfortably, finally, find his way to the DP World Tour.
It was not all plain sailing as he missed more cuts than he made in his first 18 starts, but start 19 would change his life.
"It's just golf," he says of his win in the Dominican Republic. "I like the course and it was a pretty relaxing week. Probably not really too many expectations after getting in on Sunday. I really liked the course and the conditions, the wind and all of that.
"I was taking confidence round after round and playing with the American guys that you see on top of the leaderboard sometimes on the PGA Tour gives you confidence, just comparing your game to them and all of that when you're playing alongside them."
After the Play-Offs are over, Mazzoli can begin truly planning for 2027, a season where, with a full card on both sides of the Atlantic, his destiny is very much in his own hands.
He will continue to look around and above: at the McIlroys and Schefflers, the Fleetwoods and Fitzpatricks, as his winding journey in the world of golf takes another step.
But it is clear his ambition is not just to look up to those stars, it is to join them and look across rather than up - as an equal.
"I know I can win again," he says. "I want to prove to myself more than anybody else that I can do it again.
"In this sport, you never know. It might be this week, it might be next week, it might be in one year, in two years, but I know I'm going to win again. Sooner or later, it's just a matter of keep improving for me.
"Unfortunately, you cannot skip any step and it's going to take time. It might be this week, next week, but the process is not done. Even if I get a win, there's plenty of room of improvement for me in several parts of my game.
"I'm excited for what's coming because I know there's so many things to improve and I know even right now I can get it done, but obviously there's a lot of room and I'm fairly young still and I'm excited for the journey of improving every day."
