Daniel Young went toe-to-toe with Bob MacIntyre in an epic battle at Muirfield. Now, decade down the line, he’ll join Scotland’s No.1 on the biggest stage of the lot at Royal Portrush. And Young reckons taking inspiration from the feats of the Oban star as well as DP World Tour winners such as Ewen Ferguson, Calum Hill, Connor Syme and Grant Forrest gives him the perfect motivation to flourish at The Open. The Perthshire ace produced a brilliant display at Dundonald to storm into the 153rd Championship. Young’s outstanding showing in Ayrshire soared him into the Northern Irish spectacular where he will join MacIntyre and awesome amateur pair Connor Graham and Cameron Adam as Tartan representatives. Back in 2015, Young and MacIntyre shared a thrilling scrap in the Final of the Scottish Amateur Championship which was won by the Oban ace. Now they’ll be on the same ultimate stage and Young said: “We had a great final. A good few years ago now. Went 36 holes and he pipped me at the last. No hard feelings if I can turn around my career into what he’s done so far. ”I think I’ve always kind of said, golf’s ruthless. Everybody’s where they are for a reason, you know what I mean? I’m on the Challenge [Tour] for a reason. Bob’s where he is for a reason. If you just keep ticking away, playing good golf, the rest will take care of itself. “It’s great for Scottish golf to see all these guys playing well and guys that I grew up playing with and played a lot of amateur golf with. If that doesn’t spur you on, I don’t know what will. “That’s the ultimate goal, obviously, to get out and compete with these guys and just try and win out there as well as basically win every week. That’s everybody’s goal, isn’t it? We’ve got to try and keep up with guys like Bob who’s leading the way at the moment.” Naturally, Young is buzzing for the chance to tee-up alongside the elite and said: “It’s been a long kind of six weeks on the road and this is a nice way to top it off. It’s a big, big step in my career. “I was planning to have two weeks off anyway, so it’s working fine for me, to be honest. I’m not playing the Challenge Tour the next two weeks now, so I’ll get straight to Portrush, find accommodation. “I’ve played it in the Home Internationals, but it’ll have changed since then. My last year as an amateur, I played it in the Home International, so I’m relatively familiar with it. “It’ll be interesting to see the changes and stuff. Obviously, I watched a little bit on TV when Shane Lowry won, so you kind of see bits and bobs. Yeah, I feel like it’s probably one of the harder open venues out there, which I feel like might suit my game. “I'm driving it great and tee to green has been really solid most of the year. So, if I can take the game into Portrush, there’s no reason why we can’t do well.” There is, of course, other targets aside of performing at Portrush before the year is out as he added: “Just wrap up the card for the DP World Tour, really. Yeah, as soon as I can. “First and foremost, I’m just trying to win every time I tee up on the Challenge Tour and then I guess the rest will take care of itself. But obviously, the ultimate goal is to get to the DP World Tour. “Calum Fyfe has had a great start to the season and Davie Law as well has been up there a few times. Euan Walker. There’s three or four of us up there and it would be great to see all of us push on until the end of the year and make that step up. “I grew up playing in Craigie Hill in Perth. Probably not many people have heard of that. You can see it driving up the M90 on the side of a hill, bizarrely enough. I went to college in the States and came back probably a little bit of a late bloomer compared to some guys around my age and things like that. “It’s been a patient career so far, but the last two or three years it’s been building and layer upon layer, you get more and more confident and comfortable in different scenarios and things. It’s the old cliche, brick by brick, I suppose.”