Jason Dufner trying to dispel air of gloom

The American, who lost at extra holes to Keegan Bradley at the Atlanta Athletic Club, has expressed his surprise that those around him this have been so sullen following his superb performance in Georgia.

Dufner makes an immediate return to action at the Wyndham Championship in Greensboro, North Carolina today and is in good spirits. "It's been kind of a weird experience," Dufner told pgatour.com. "Everybody that's come up to me almost feel like it's a funeral or something tragic happened.

"But I don't feel that way at all. It was a great experience. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to win that event. But I had a great chance, my best opportunity, probably, to win my first tour event."

Dufner has unsurprisingly attracted significantly more attention from the media ahead of this week's event. "I think all the questions that have been asked of me (by journalists] have been pretty honest," he admitted.

"They want to, I guess you'd say, get in my head and see where I'm at. I'm pretty confident and pretty good with it.

"There's a lot of good things that happened last week. I think I showed a lot of people around the world that I can play some pretty good golf. And I probably showed myself that I can play a lot of good golf."