Hamilton's win heaps pressure on Europeans

Golf: If we'd always suspected golf, especially the professional version, was a strange world, we know it for sure now. Todd Hamilton has confirmed it, writes Philip Reid.reports

While he became the latest American to reserve a first-class seat to take the claret jug as British Open champion back with him across the Atlantic, his win - even more than that of other unlikely major winners of recent years such as Ben Curtis or Rich Beem or Shaun Micheel - must surely make the cream of the crop in Europe wonder what they must do to win a major championship.

The stark statistic is that no European player has won a major since Paul Lawrie captured the British Open at Carnoustie in 1999; and, let's be honest, he was an even more unlikely champion than Hamilton, who'd cut his teeth in the Far East - winning no fewer than 11 times on the Japanese Tour, including four times last year - and then took the Honda Classic earlier his year in his rookie season on the US Tour.

As Hamilton, an extremely articulate man, remarked later: "I've always felt if you can win golf tournaments, whether it be a junior club championship, a ladies club champion, The Players Championship in the States - I don't know if they still have it here (in Europe) - the Benson and Hedges (they don't), or the Japan Open, I've always felt if you go through the trials and tribulations throughout a four-day tournament and win, that can only benefit you in the long run. It's definitely very good for your mental outlook."

He added: "I hope our victories can spur on guys, whether they're rookies on the PGA Tour, guys on the Canadian Tour, guys on the Hooters Tour (in America), or the Challenge Tour here in Europe. If they look and see, 'if that guy can do it - who is that guy? - I should be able to do that'. I think that's good for the game of golf."

Certainly, the romance of Hamilton's win is almost a script for a Hollywood movie. This is a guy who came close to quitting golf in 1992. "He'd lost all his sponsors and had not enough money to go to Florida to practice in the sun," recalled his wife, Jaque, "so he stayed up in Illinois in the cold, taking out a little green mat with him to practice on the ice."

And to make ends meet Hamilton worked in the family grocery store. Of those tough times, Hamilton remarked there was a time "when I thought about not playing golf . . . (but) the flip side of that is, I don't know how to do much other than play golf. So that's probably the reason why I stuck it out."

There was the hard work, too, with someone describing him as a "range rat", a player who could always be found on the practice ground. "Yes, that's probably true. I've always enjoyed playing golf, and I still do. I don't remember what age I was, but there was a time when I played seven rounds in one day on a nine-hole course where I grew up.

"And I think a lot of that time I spent in Japan, the TV in Japan is not that good, so it was useless for me to go back to the hotel and try to watch TV, so I would just stay at the golf course until it got close to dark, whether it be chipping, putting, hitting balls, I would do it. I enjoy playing golf, sometimes to a fault. I tend to play too much golf."

The policy has certainly reaped rewards, but European players who must look on with a degree of envy know that these titles are there for them too.

After all, the European Tour is as tough as it comes - and has been the breeding ground for South Africans like Ernie Els and Retief Goosen and, in his time, Australia's Greg Norman to go on and win majors. And success should breed success on the bigger stage.

As each year and each major slips by since Lawrie's win, though, the pressure on Europe's best - headed by Ireland's Padraig Harrington and Darren Clarke, but also including Sergio Garcia, who has won twice on the US Tour this season, and Lee Westwood - to win becomes a burden of expectation, as much from themselves as from others.

Eventually one of them will win a major, and you can be sure a collective sigh of relief will be heard. The final major of the year is next month's US PGA at Whistling Straits, Wisconsin, for which Harrington and Clarke are exempt. But Paul McGinley, 110th in the world, needs to climb 10 places to ensure entry unless the PGA of America extend special invitations given how close he is in the Ryder Cup reckoning.

A similar scenario arises in the case of Graeme McDowell.

Of course, a win in this week's Nissan Irish Open at Baltray would solve any such problems.

As usual, there is a large Irish presence in the field, and Killarney's Daniel Sugrue has been rewarded for his tenacious performance as a qualifier at Royal Troon by getting a late sponsor's invitation into the field.

In all, there are 16 Irish professionals and one amateur, Mark Campbell, in the field seeking to become the first Irish winner of the title since John O'Leary in 1982. The professionals are: Harrington, Clarke, McGinley, McDowell, Peter Lawrie, Gary Murphy, Damien McGrane, Colm Moriarty, Sugrue, David Higgins, Damien Mooney, John Dwyer, Leslie Walker, Brendan McGovern, John Murray and Philip Walton.

VOLVO ORDER OF MERIT (Irish positions): 5, Darren Clarke a973,466; 11, Padraig Harrington a786,849; 12, Graeme McDowell a770,631; 26, Paul McGinley a457,619; 80, Gary Murphy a173,431; 89, Peter Lawrie a151,935; 97, Damien McGrane a135,656.