Richard Bland admits he's a more chilled-out character these days - and puts it down to girlfriend Caroline Geere.

"She's a calming presence," says the 31-year-old Southampton golfing star. "I used to go out for a few drinks with the lads; now I prefer to be home with her. My party days are over!"

The soothing effect of the girl he will marry in August has helped make him a better golfer too.

"I'm not so hard with myself out on the golf course," says Bland, whose brittle temperament showed through when his game began to slide off the rails.

He burst on to the national scene as a teenager, battling his way into the final of the English Amateur Championship, then was on the verge of his first European Tour win in 2002 after he brilliantly made it through to a sudden-death play-off for the Murphy's Irish Open at Fota Island.

Bland thought he had sealed it with a six foot putt but it ringed the hole, stayed above ground, and Denmark's Soren Hansen went on to take the honours.

Another good result in the lucrative BMW International Open capped a superb year, but in 2003 Bland's birdie-laden game became littered with as many bogeys.

"I had a problem swinging the club," says Bland, who went on to lose his card and spent most of last winter getting to the root of the problem and trying to sort it out."

He did and after 11 months of grinding out consistently good scores on the Challenge Tour and finishing 13th in the order of merit, he's back on the main tour and has pencilled in the Caltex Masters in Singapore on January 27 as his first event of 2005.

"If I can feel the swing slipping a bit, I've devised a few drills to get it back. It worked through 2004 with the result that I was a lot more consistent," he said.

"When I got back on to the European Tour in Hong Kong last month, it was much the same. I played pretty well and got through the cut."

His decision not to play in next week's South African Open was influenced by a nightmare 32-hour journey from Hong Kong to play in the Dunhill Championship at Leopard Creek.

The course was in the middle of nowhere close to the Kruger National Park and the last leg of the journey was by minibus which got a puncture!

He didn't arrive until the early hours of the morning and admitted: "The trip did my head in. My time clock was all wrong and I was in no real fit state to go out and play.

"I missed the cut, went home and took about four more days to recover. So I won't be going to South Africa again this year."

Bland, who lives next door to European Tour stablemate Matt Blackey in Stoneham, was off to Dubai this week for some warm weather practice with coach Tim Barter.

His targets for the new season are to make sure he keeps his card as quickly as possible. Given that the top 115 keep their cards, Bland says: "I'm aiming higher than 114th place in the order of merit. The Volvo Masters (for the top 60) would be a good target to aim for.

"And when I look at some of the players who won for the first time on the main tour in 2004, I would like to think I'm as good as some and that I've got a win in me, too."