Players Championship: England's David Skinns on making Sawgrass debut this week

Skinns has won 10 events since turning professional in 2005

Wearing a beard that contains rather more salt than pepper, England's David Skinns is living proof that the top of men's professional golf is not quite the sole preserve of the younger generation.

Aged 42, the Lincoln-born pro makes his debut in this week's Players Championship, the PGA Tour's $25m flagship tournament, at the famed TPC Sawgrass having nearly won already in Florida earlier this month.

Skinns talks of a "sense of arrival" after one of the longest and most enduring of journeys. He has traversed a myriad of feeder tours that eventually led to the riches of the premier American circuit.

"You're right, it has been a long time coming," Skinns told BBC Sport on the eve of the Players which starts here on Thursday. "I played college golf over here and you kind of hope and expect this to happen a little sooner.

"But my journey has been more about gradually getting better and getting comfortable and trying to figure out how I can play my best more often. It's taken almost 20 years of pro golf to get here."

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Skinns was beaten in the final of the Boys Amateur Championship in 2000 before attending the University of Tennessee. From there he played on the now defunct Hooters Tour, where he won seven times, and then the Canada Tour.

Eventually he made it to the feeder Korn Ferry Tour - the Championship to the PGA Tour's Premier League. His third Korn Ferry victory came last year and helped him win the most hard-earned of promotions.

"It's never a straight line, there are always ups and downs," he said.

"From the outside people would say I struggled, but it never felt like that. I never thought about what else; this is what I've done for a long time and I know my best is good enough to compete."

For a while he was a contemporary of current world number one Scottie Scheffler on the Korn Ferry circuit, but he has also seen many fellow competitors fall victim to the harsh realities of the ultra-competitive world of the pro game.

"I've played a ton of golf with guys every bit as talented and they've just run out of money basically," Skinns revealed. "I managed to avoid that knife and always kept getting a little better."

He added: "The thought of doing something else has never entered my head.

"When I first played mini tour golf as a pro it wasn't immediate success. When I first got good at England Golf, I wasn't the best. It took me a while to get there and it seems to have been the story at every level."

Skinns was one of the last players to make it into the Sawgrass field this week, thanks in the main to his fourth place at the Cognizant Classic a fortnight ago.

"It was great," he said. "I was in contention and I hung around. Sunday, we had the rain delay and it was uncomfortable but Monday I came out with a really good attitude and I felt like I could have won.

"I don't want to say it's a relief because that's not quite the right word. I knew I could compete out here. That's what we are all looking for.

"To feel those nerves is why you play. A sense of arrival, that would be a good way of putting it."

And he is not overawed by the prospect of competing against the athletic young guns who are so dominant on the world stage these days.

"You've got guys like Nick Dunlap (who won the recent American Express tournament as an amateur) who was still in college when he won, but that's the beauty of golf," Skinns said.

"There's no age limit until your body can't do it. I'm 42 and I feel good. I've still got the speed and there's no reason I can't keep getting better.

"Guys like Jake Knapp, that's the new model. Young and strong coming out of college. They've got 185 mph ball speed and they're in the gym all the time and that's something I've always tried to do and I feel like I can hang.

"I don't feel like an old man, I might look like it but I don't feel like it. My three kids at home keep me young."

And Skinns does not lack for ambition this week. "Just to be here is great, but I don't want to be someone who is just here," he said. "That's never been my mentality.

"I feel like Cognizant was a stepping stone. I'd love to feel what it's like to be close to the lead on a Sunday afternoon at the Players. I've put a whole lot of work in to feel what that's like."