Shifting boxes, heaving sofas, assembling flat pack furniture, birling an Allen Key instead of twirling a 5-iron with a flourish after a cracking approach into the green? Being a professional golfer is not all glitz and glamour you know.

“We are moving into the new family home and we are trying to get it all done before Christmas,” said Connor Syme, one of Scotland’s bright new faces on the men’s European Tour. “I’ve had to build a bed for myself because my old one broke when I was moving it.”

The good thing for Syme is that he can take his work home with him. The new family pile is right next to the driving range which his dad, Stuart, runs at Drumoig near St Andrews.

Amid all this toing and froing, Syme junior has been doing plenty of moving himself in his golf career. A European Tour card was secured at the qualifying school final back in November and, along with his young compatriot Bradley Neil, the tartan twosome have brought the average age of the Scots on the main tour down by a considerable chunk.

Hopes were high for Syme when he made the leap into the paid ranks after playing in the Walker Cup for GB&I and his early efforts only heightened this sense of expectation.

A 12th place finish on his tour debut in Portugal was followed by a 15th in the lucrative Dunhill Links Championship in his own back yard of Fife as he took advantage of another tournament invitation. There was still the arduous qualifying school process to endure, a grim trudge that would make Hannibal’s march over the Alps look like a quick nip down to the local greengrocers.

Of course, Syme passed the examination with flying colours and while he missed his first two cuts as a fully paid up member of the tour in Mauritius and South Africa, the 22-year-old maintains a period of rest and recuperation after a fraught year will stand him in good stead.

“I can’t lie, mentally and physically I was feeling it after the tour school,” he said. “In South Africa, for instance, I was finding it hard to do the longer days of practice and was just trying to conserve energy. These are not excuses but it had been a big, long year.

“I put everything I had into tour school to grind it out and get through it. It would probably have been better for my body and mind if that was my last event of the year to be honest but you have to get out and play when you are a rookie and you can’t really turn down these early events.

“Both Bradley and myself have not had the best of starts in terms of the early events. He made the cut in one and missed the cut in two. I stayed with him in Mauritius and we both felt a bit beat physically. He was in a similar boat. He’d had such a long, demanding year, too. We’ll both benefit from this time off.”

As well as illuminating a campaign by qualifying for the Open, Syme also found himself plunged into the spotlight with a practice round at the Dunhill Links in the company of Rory McIlroy. The young Scot took it all in his stride while others worked themselves into a drooling fever.

“There was a lot of hype with Rory,” added Syme, who will likely restart his tour duties in January’s South African Open while taking up an invitation to the Dubai Desert Classic later that month.

“He said some nice things about me and it did add pressure. It was a brilliant experience but that’s part of being a pro golfer; new experiences and having to deal with uncomfortable situations.”

None are more uncomfortable than the qualifying school and in a year of impressive strides, negotiating that rigmarole was the biggest step.

“There was a lot on the line and getting somewhere to play my golf was huge,” he reflected. “After turning pro that’s where the attention turned too. Because I’d done well in events before that, there was a bit more expectation but tour school is not easy.

“There were comments on social media when I was going into the last round with folk almost saying ‘congratulations, you’ve got your card’. But you can’t take anything for granted.

“In football, say, you can be 3-0 up with 15 minutes left and pretty safe. At q-school, a double-bogey can happen just as quickly as a birdie and before you know it, you’re out of the qualifying zone. I handled it, though.”

With the house move nearly done, Syme can hopefully get moving on the tour in 2018.