WELL, it’s back to the auld claes and porridge now. A week at the Turkish Airlines Open, in the shimmering, all-inclusive opulence of the Regnum Carya resort, tends to be a lavish exercise in eye-watering indulgence that would make Caligula’s extravagant excesses look like Oliver Twist whimpering for another bowl of gruel.

It’s the kind of event where the drooling golf writers discover a meal between breakfast and brunch as we float serenely down the vast boulevards of the all-you-can-eat buffet with mouths agape like whales homing in on a shoal of unsuspecting plankton.

The belly has been pleading for mercy but in this game, you need a strong stomach to survive. Bradley Neil certainly showed that kind of sturdy resolve at the weekend as his golfing talents and mental fortitude were put through the wringer in the Challenge Tour Grand Final.

In the end, it was worth the anguish as the 21-year-old earned promotion to the main European Tour by the skin of his teeth. The bunting will be going up in Blairgowrie now.

At last, the home of golf has a young ‘un on the tour. And let’s face it, we’ve been crying out for an injection of new blood for a while. The average age of the Scots on the European men’s circuit at the moment is 37. “He’ll bring that down by about 20 years,” said the 43-year-old Stephen Gallacher with a chuckle.

It’s been no laughing matter, of course. In a global game full of fearless talents who are ready to hit the ground running, golf is getting younger and younger but, while players from other nations sometimes adapt quickly, the Scots tend to be left wheezing behind.

We don’t like to harp on about the age thing but you just can’t avoid it. In an interview with a golf magazine the other week, a line of questioning took Neil down that particular route and he responded by saying that: “I think Scottish golf on the whole gets an unfair review at the end of every year” while suggesting that the media, presumably, should be “supporting and crediting guys who have made it even more.”

That’s fair enough but, by and large, the Scottish golf writers have given players at all levels some seriously good coverage down the seasons. Some would say perhaps too much, especially in these fallow times. There are players from other countries enjoying bountiful success on a regular basis who get far, far less column inches than the Scots.

At least Neil has given us something cheery to write about. It’s easy to forget that he is only 21. He was a winner throughout his amateur career, from the under-14s, through the under-18s and then on to the men’s scene with his Amateur Championship success. Neil always exuded confidence and certainly wasn’t shy in demonstrating that. In a country where we often prefer our sportsmen and women to be modest and down to earth, Neil had a cockiness that may not have suited everyone.

He backed it up with results, though. His early ventures in the pro scene proved to be fairly chastening, however, but have no doubt made him a more rounded, knowledgeable golfer.

Neil has done the hard yards with a tough apprenticeship on the proven breeding ground of the Challenge Tour for two years and, even with a morale-sapping series of results in the formative stages of his pro career, he has dug in, took the dunts on the chin and got on with it.

“It takes a lot of balls to do what he did in the Grand Final and that will stand him in unbelievable stead,” added Gallacher. “The pressure he came through at the weekend is the same as when you are trying to win a tournament. Bradley has got the bottle. I knew that from the minute I first saw him play.”

Across the board, there was a genuine sense of delight for Neil. Peter Uihlein, the PGA Tour player who partnered Neil in the 2013 Dunhill Links Pro-Am and was so impressed he donated £10,000 of prize money to aid the Scot’s development, had his own advice. “It’s a long season and you are going to have peaks and valleys,” he said. “Keep the pedal down and keep it going.”

Neil has worked hard to get on to the tour. Now that he’s there, the hard work really begins.