"Stress? I didn't know what the word meant until the last five or six weeks, now I'm an expert on the subject. I haven't had a night's sleep since about July." Now? Well, after his Glenmore Eagles 2 landed smoothly in the final week of the 2000 Golf Masters, the only problem a bleary-eyed Colin Rutherford has now is deciding how to spend his £15,000 first prize.
We're confident the money will work beautifully as a stress reliever for Colin, who admits he's been walking around his home town of Lisburn in a haze since Monday morning, when he received confirmation of his success. Mind you, Niclas Fasth and Kirk Triplett's failure to survive beyond Friday at the Lancome Trophy and the Pennsylvania Classic made the weekend a whole lot less stomach churning for Colin than it might have been.
In the end he held off the challenge of Terenure's Michael Daly, who picks up £3,000, to win the competition by almost £80,000, despite Michael's Pins and Needles, once again, outscoring the leaders. A first-round 78 for Fasth in Paris, though, and a 74 for Triplett in Pennsylvania all but ended Michael's hopes of making up Colin's £90,327 lead - and when Thomas Bjorn followed up a promising opening round of 66 with a 75 at the Lancome Trophy, he began waving a white Golf Masters' flag.
"On Friday night I knew I'd won it but I was afraid to start celebrating until I got the phone call," said Colin. "Once I saw Triplett had missed the cut I thought that was that - although you start worrying about everything, like what if Fredrik Jacobson is disqualified and Bjorn ends up winning? Honest to God, I'm worn out with the stress. "I'll give you your headline for Thursday: The Eagles have landed. How about that? Ah, I'm absolutely delighted, I can't believe it. I loved every minute of it, it was such good fun. I'll tell you another thing - check your computer next year and you'll lose count of the number of entrants from Lisburn. I'm a celebrity around here now, I'm even signing autographs."
Naturally, us lot at Golf Masters HQ are entirely impartial but between ourselves our hearts would have been broken for Colin if he'd been pipped in the end. He did, after all, lead the competition since week 20 and averaged earnings of £143,787 each week from then on - fairly incredible consistency.
He first appeared on the overall leaderboard in week 17, went top the following week but was displaced by Michael Delaney's Train Spotters in week 19. After that there was no stopping him and he fought off a succession of challengers, including Michael Daly at the end. Colin began with the same line-up as he finished with - Darren Clarke, Tiger Woods, Mark Brooks, Steve Flesch, Nick O'Hern, Frederik Jacobson and Raymond Russell - but used his four transfers to shuffle his pack, at crucial times, with huge success.
In week 17 he brought Lee Westwood in for Woods and Westwood won the European Grand Prix. A week later he replaced Westwood with Padraig Harrington, who picked up almost £20,000 at the Irish Open. A fortnight later Colin Montgomerie took Harrington's place in the lineup and finished third at the Loch Lomond International. Then Woods returned, just in time for the British Open - and you know what he did there. Moral of the story? The three most important factors in this competition are transfers, transfers and transfers.
Congratulations, too, to Joe Mooney of Castleknock, Dublin, who snuck in to third place, beating Fionn Murphy to the £1,500 prize, thanks largely to Jacobsen's £10,750 earnings in France.
