It was a classic case of mission accomplished for Bernhard Langer as he saw off England's Warren Bennett to win the TNT Dutch Open in extra time in Noordwijk yesterday and virtually secure a Ryder Cup return.

With Spain's Sergio Garcia and the Swede Jesper Parnevik hot favourites to be Cup captain Sam Torrance's two wild-card picks, Langer needs to make sure of an automatic top ten berth.

It is a goal he has had in his sights since Torrance's predecessor, Mark James, controversially left him on the sidelines two years ago.

Yesterday Bennett, 14 years Langer's junior at 29, stood between the Bavarian and his first victory for four years.

Bennett, who has the stature at 6ft 3in and straight-backed bearing of a guardsman, matched his 36 to the turn, then birdied the 10th to go two ahead.

Both men eagled the long 11th, then Langer, after hitting the flag with his pitch at the 13th to set up a birdie, holed a vital putt from 12 feet to drop just one stroke at the next after a wayward drive.

It was Bennett's turn to display his fighting qualities at the 15th as he matched Langer's four-foot birdie with his own from 12 feet.

But the young man playing on a medical exemption after missing almost all the 2000 season with pneumonia and damaged nerves and bones in his neck, could find no answer to Langer's thunderous birdies from 12 feet and 30 feet at the 16th and short 17th .

Both men parred the last, Langer coming back in 30 for a 66 and Bennett in 31 for a 67 - the two finished level on 269, 15-under par, four shots ahead of Miguel Angel Jimenez.

When the top two played the 18th again in sudden death, the lanky Bennett, who followed five 1998 victories on the Challenge Tour by picking up his first European Tour title in the 1999 Scottish PGA Championship, at last cracked under the Teutonic pressure, charging his long birdie putt past the hole, then jerking his three-footer back wide of the target.

Langer confessed: "I feel sorry for him. He played very well but I've played great for a few weeks now and I'm proud of how I finished the job under all that pressure.

"Sam Torrance has already been on the phone thanking me for making his job easier."

Langer's win was worth 300,000 Ryder Cup points and hoisted him to seventh in the qualifying table.

Jimenez, Severiano Ballesteros's vice captain the last time Europe won the cup in 1997, looked set to challenge after collecting seven birdies in the first 13 holes to move 12 under par.

He dropped a shot at the 14th and missed crucial four-foot birdie chances on the 16th and 17th, but his third place lifts him into 11th place in the Cup rankings with Andrew Coltart, the man preferred to Langer by James two years ago, slipping from 10th to 12th.

For the most part it was a day to forget for the Irish, if not an uneventful one. Padraig Harrington birdied the first to move right into contention, but a triple bogey put paid to his chances, even though he battled back to finish level par for the day.

Darren Clarke capped a bad weekend by signing for a 74, but that statistic hides his remarkable recovery from a 10 on one hole.

David Higgins and Paul McGinley could do no better than 75s, but Philip Walton kept a steady head to finish on four under par.