The 43-year-old sportsman is preparing to hang up his clubs and he insisted it is right to call time on his lengthy career now because he doesn’t feel he is invested enough to still be “relevant”.

Asked why he is retiring, he told Today’s Golfer magazine: “Why now? Because it’s been 25 years. Because my weeks are pretty long. Because I’m not as engaged as I once was.

“I’m just not able to go through the weeks like I used to.

“When you compete against 20 year olds that have a lot of appetite, you get to a certain age, you need to be fully engaged to keep being relevant.

“It’s not like I can’t play anymore but I don’t really put what I need to in place to be competitive, or at least play and be relevant enough.”

Nicolas made his 500th start on the DP World Tour at the Dunhill Links in September and he is “pretty proud” to have hit the milestone.

He explained: “When you look at the numbers and you realise there’s not even 50 of us that have been able to get to that number, it’s a bit overwhelming and you realise that you’ve been around for a long, long time and that you’ve played a lot of golf.

“Yes, I’ll be the first to admit that I could have done a lot better. I could have probably won about 10 or 15 times on tour, I had what was required.

“But trust me, I had a lot of fun those last 25 years as well.

“I look back with not as much regret as a lot of people might think.”