SUCH is the nature of golf, that one good week - one good day even - can change the trajectory of a player’s career forever.

For Jordan Smith, one such day arrived on Friday, October 30 last year.

Derry Hill’s Smith already had an impressive amateur career on his CV, regular outings for the England amateur team, competition wins and an appearance in the Walker Cup – amateur golf’s equivalent of the Ryder Cup – to his name when he made the decision to seek a career in the paid ranks at the end of 2014.

Ten months later, having largely plied his early pro trade on the third tier of European golf, the EuroPro Tour, the now 23-year-old arrived at the season-ending Matchroom Sport Tour Championship title at Desert Springs Resort in Spain.

He already had a victory on the Tour – at Chart Hills in Kent – to his name from earlier in the summer but the carrot of elevation to the second-tier Challenge Tour – one step below the European Tour – remained a possibility.

Smith arrived knowing nothing less than victory would do and, while well placed after two of the three rounds, he found himself down the field heading to the final 18 holes.

And so to that fateful Friday, where Smith blitzed the course in 64 strokes to make his way into a four-hole play-off, in which he subsequently triumphed.

The Bowood player was £20,000 richer but, more importantly, that place on the Challenge Tour and a gateway to a whole new career was open.

“I won at Chart Hills a few months earlier and obviously, that gave me the confidence that the game was there,’’ he said.

“I went to Spain and just really had a good week. I had a friend caddying for me so that relaxed me a fair bit and I probably played some of the best golf I ever played.

“It was one hell of a way to end – to have to win that to get on the Challenge Tour. I didn’t really think about it at all. I didn’t know the maths of it of it at all, I just knew I had to do well.’’

Today, Smith embarks on that Challenge Tour schedule, starting at the Barclays Kenya Open in Nairobi, followed by the Red Sea Egyptian Challenge in Suez, with Turkey, Slovakia and China just some of his other possible destinations throughout the next nine months.

“There’s 27 events now so it’s pretty hectic – Kenya, then Egypt,’’ he said.

“You’re going all around the world and getting different stamps on your passport. I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been playing some good golf leading up to it. It will be a different country every week virtually; fly in one Monday and out the following Monday.

“It’s a tough school. You can see the names in there; ex-Ryder Cup players, European Tour players and guys who have won on the European Tour.

“The target is the top 15 to get a place on the European Tour and hopefully chuck in a win along the way.

“For the first half of the year, I’ll pretty much play every event I can and if I’m playing well, then I may be able to have the odd week off. But if I’m struggling a little bit I’ll have to continue playing.’’

It nearly got so much better for Smith. Just days after his Spanish win last October, he headed to the qualifying school finals of the full European Tour, eventually missing out on the possibility of playing rights to the top flight by just one shot.

While there are regrets though, he also sees the benefits of his steady, rather than sharp rise up the sport’s ranks.

“Obviously, knowing that I’d secured the full Challenge card, it did take the pressure off, but in the first two rounds, nothing really went my way and I was having to crawl back those shots in later rounds,’’ he said of qualifying school.

“That was the first time I’d got to the final stage but hopefully I won’t have to do that again.

“It was good that I had the year on EuroPro just to learn and get used to being a professional and playing week in and week out.

“That’s definitely helped “Obviously, you get some players who do well at Tour School and go straight to being a pro and then struggle and work their way back down, so I think it’s good to make gradual progression.’’

Winter has been spent honing his craft with coach Simon Shanks at Bowood, ready for the rigours of the Tour, while a pre-season warm-weather trip to Portugal yielded two wins and two runners-up spots on the local Algarve Tour.

And if Smith needs any further reminder as to how fortunes can change quickly, he need only look at his 2013 Great Britain & Ireland Walker Cup teammate Matthew Fitzpatrick, whose early forays in the pro game saw him achieve a breakout victory at last October’s high-profile British Masters at Woburn.

“I look at Fitzpatrick, who I was in the Walker Cup squad with, and I try to look at what he’s done since and it shows what can happen,’’ he added.