Danny Willett will forever be known as a Masters champion. Just the mere mention of it brings a smile to his face and so it should – not many in the game can say it about themselves.
It’s a golfer’s dream to win a Major Championship and Willett fulfilled that ambition when he turned a three-stroke deficit into a three-stroke victory over defending champion Jordan Spieth and Lee Westwood at the Masters Tournament in 2016.
In winning the Green Jacket, days after the birth of his first child Zachariah, he became England's first Masters champion since Sir Nick Faldo in 1996.
More than eight years on from that stunning triumph at Augusta National, Willett admits he still gets goosebumps talking about it.
And he relived some of those memories in conversation with George Harper Jr. and Nicolas Colsaerts in the latest episode of the Life On Tour presented by Buffalo Trace podcast.
Among those, he reveals the story of how he came to go for a run on the morning after his celebrations with family and friends.
"I got up at 7am and went for a run," Willett recalls. "I was still drunk, I was still intoxicated, but I had so much adrenaline. It was like I was floating on a cloud to be honest. It was the easiest run I’ve ever done.”
As a past winner, Willett is a guest year in, year out at the Champions Dinner, alongside many of the greats of the game.
"I don't know, I often feel like an imposter at times," he says of his place among such elite company. "You look around, it's a phenomenal room to be around."
Willett, who first earned his DP World Tour playing rights in 2008 at Qualifying School, has achieved plenty in his career. But it has not all been plain sailing.
After his Masters triumph, he had to wait 953 days days to return to the winner's circle at the 2018 DP World Tour Championship, the sixth of his eight DP World Tour titles to date.
Since the most recent of those - the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in 2021 - he has faced recovering from a serious shoulder injury, defying doctors' expectations to play at this year's Masters, coincidently, after six months away from the game.
"It is just tournament rust," he says of the challenges he has faced since returning to action. "I can play at home with my pals but when you stand on the first tee with 5,000 people it is just different.
"Even though I have played at a really high level and in front of big crowds and in pressure situations, when you have been out of it for a while it is still a weird game."
Another standout point of his career was representing Europe at the Ryder Cup in 2016 at Hazeltine, and while that ended in defeat he is hopeful of having the chance to play in the biennial matchplay event again in the future.
"I would love to be a part of a few more but obviously at least one at home would be a nice experience to be around," he says.
"But it's not that easy, it's every two years, it's the top guys."
To watch and listen to the full interview with Willett, click on the video at the top of the page.
