Two of Britain’s leading golfers who spent hours playing together at a Rickmansworth course are set to team up on the PGA Tour for the first time, the Watford Observer can reveal.

Matt Wallace and Callum Shinkwin are due to take on some of the world’s biggest names in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans team event at the TPC Louisiana course in Avondale, starting on April 20.

The two men played numerous rounds together at Moor Park as they were making their way in a sport which has seen both go on to win on the DP World Tour, while Wallace claimed his first victory on the PGA Tour at the Corales Puntacana Championship last month.

“It’s great for me in a sense of I’m playing with someone I’ve obviously played with a lot,” Wallace said. “We played Hero Cup (in January) and played really well, foursomes, fourball we’ve had prep in that. And I’m also playing with someone for who it’s a free go, which I think is really important in an event where he’s not playing for a place, he’s playing for a win and that’s it. There’s nothing else for Callum, so I’m buzzing to have him there.

"I’m playing well, I know what Callum’s ability is like and I’m glad he’s taken the option to come and play with me.”

Moor Park honorary member and former professional Wallace revealed the news in a wide-ranging interview with the Watford Observer when he visited his sponsors West One Loans in Clarendon Road yesterday.

We’ll publish more of Wallace’s thoughts on his first PGA Tour win, how his career has progressed from his time at Moor Park when he broke through on the then European Tour after a record-breaking run of victories on the Alps Tour, and his views on the rebel LIV Golf in the coming days.

The two men are friends but they are also fellow professionals – and Wallace believes the Watford-born golfer who will be making his PGA Tour debut at the event is capable of achieving much more.

“He’s for me the most under-rated and under-achieved golfer that I’ve ever known because of his ability, “ Wallace said. “He was the person that made me practice harder because of how good he was. I’ve played with everyone in the world and he’s still the person that I say to people ‘you need to go and watch him hit balls’.

“I used to drive down Moor Park and we’d have a tee time at 7.30am, 8am and I’d be on the range for an hour grinding, he’d rock up at five to eight, hit a couple of balls in the net and then out-drive me by 30, 40 yards and I’m like ‘this isn’t fair!’

Wallace laughed as he recalled: “I caddied for him in Abu Dhabi. He was teeing off the first shot of the whole tournament. A par four, water on the right, bunker on the left. The best bit of caddying I’ve ever done was telling him we’re just playing at home with the boys at Moor Park and he’s, classic Callum, nutted this thing straight down the middle, got a wedge in, made four.

“After the tee shot I’m thinking ‘what’s ten per cent of three million?!’ I was counting the dollars up straight away and then we made bogey on two, the par five, so maybe not…”