The house was in an idyllic setting, a quiet glade down by the 16th green on the Harbour Town Links. It was mid-afternoon on a sultry day in South Carolina and there, with his back to the patio glass, David Feherty sat writing on a foolscap pad.

"This is for the July issue of Golf magazine," he explained when I disturbed him at his work. He passed me over two photo-copied sheets: "Here, look at this Seamus Heaney poem sent to me from Ireland. It's absolutely brilliant. Wonderful."

After reading Heaney, I wondered if Feherty had listened to the celebrated BBC golf commentator, Henry Longhurst, a man of comparable skill with the spoken word. Could he one day imagine himself being helped up the ladder to the CBS commentary box, full of gin?

"A distinct possibility," he admitted, "except that it wouldn't be gin. Vodka more than likely. Seriously, I don't drink at all (on the job); I wouldn't even think about it. But to be perfectly fair, it's obviously possible to walk that very fine line and drink to the point where you become a little more creative, as Longhurst did.

"I think he was probably at his best when he was more than a little on the Anheuser side of Busch, as they say over here. There were people like Pat Summerall, who was frequently plastered up there in the tower. And it worked.

"If you look at creative people - poets, writers, artists - you know half of them were opium fiends. If it expands your mind to the extent that it might make you more creative, why not? Though I hasten to add that I have no great wish to find out, certainly not at this stage of my career."

The career stage to which he referred was just after he had come through another highly successful US Masters as a member of the CBS team, with responsibility for the pivotal 15th hole. In less than two years, his impact on the US scene has been quite remarkable.

Did he need help in overcoming his inhibitions? "Not really," came the reply. "But to be perfectly honest, I don't know how I get away with it. I obviously have the ability to say things in a way that doesn't offend people. And quite frankly, I can't explain what allows me to do that."

He went on: "A certain amount of it is due to self deprecation. If I see faults in a player out there it's because I recognise them as having been in my own game. I would hate to think that I might ever fall into the trap of criticising just for the hell of it, without giving the reason why."

I then reminded him of a piece written about him in the Augusta Chronicle during Masters week. And how, in describing the size of one of the bunkers on the Blue Monster course at Doral, he had suggested that wars had been started in the Middle East over less sand.

He laughed, acknowledging it as one of his better lines. "Yeh, that bunker is the size of Kuwait. How the hell do you rake that thing?" It was then that I realised our chat was going to involve quite a few non-sequiturs. Keeping Feherty on track isn't easy, but it was fun trying.

Was it possible that in television broadcasting, which he turned to only when his golfing career on the USPGA Tour hit a dead-end, he had found his metier? "Yes, I feel that's absolutely right," he replied. "I really do."

Then, carefully picking his words, he continued: "It's almost as if I was supposed to go through 20 years playing the game for a living in order to get here. And the truth is that I couldn't do what I do now unless I had that experience as a player. Especially spending most of my time on the ground (as an on-course commentator), which is where I'm happiest.

"Being down among the caddies and the players is where I always wanted to be from the time I was a caddie myself. First of all, I caddied at Bangor before spreading my wings to go as far afield as Waterville. Anytime a European Tour event came to Ireland, I would be off with Jonesey (David Jones) or Peter Tupling or . . .

"I just loved hanging around professional golfers and I decided that whatever would allow me to continue doing that, is what I wanted to do in life. Among other things, it was a wonderful way of avoiding a nine-to-five job. Absolutely. Not only that: I didn't want to be told what to do."

But would he not acknowledge that he became a very fine golfer; who won several tournaments; made a splendid contribution to the European effort in the 1991 Ryder Cup; and challenged strongly for the British Open in 1989 and 1994? "Well, I had my moments," he acknowledged.

The brow furrowed: "I believe I was perfectly capable of winning the Open Championship, or the PGA Championship here, or any tournament if I got my chance. I got close on a couple of occasions but I never felt like I might win.

"I never reached what you would call the upper echelons of the professional game, probably because I never worked really hard enough. If fact I've never worked very hard at anything. I'm essentially a very lazy person."

Did he fear he might be found out? "Oh, I hope not," he replied. And with a wicked grin he added: "But I might - if you write it."

He then picked up one of the foolscap pages he had been writing when I interrupted him. "This stuff I write for Golf magazine . . . you know I never learned to type so I end up writing 1,200 to 1,500 words longhand and it takes me . . . well I'm so lazy I always leave it to the last minute.

"In the process, I probably write about 3,500, there is so much scratching out and notes on the margins and things like that. I enjoy that process, though I find it quite a lot of work, even when I make up a lot of it and pretend it's true.

`I believe writing is what I am going to end up doing. I know there's a book. And I'm not talking about an anecdotal toilet book: I've already got about 25,000 words in short articles that could go into that sort of thing.

"No, I'm looking at a novel. Not primarily about golf, though there would be a certain amount of it there. I'm thinking that if Dick Francis can write about racing I could write about a golfing theme with a central character that could be possibly a private investigator or a . . ."

He hesitated. "Or a broadcaster?" I suggested. "Yeh, although I don't think a broadcaster would work. The central character is more likely to be a caddie. But then, so much of what I write is more of a side-gag, more of a screenplay than a novel.

"I know what I see but I find it difficult to put it down accurately in words. I find it would be so much easier to write dialogue."

Turning his attention to the written page, he said: "I'm writing about spectators here. It's getting harder for me to find topics because you can't be topical in a magazine article that's going to be published in a couple of months' time. Anyway, I start off with European spectators.

"I've said here: `The Irish are almost the exact opposite to the French in that we dress badly, can't cook, can't stand each other and love everybody else. I hope I'm offending every nation equally here in that I'd hate to have more French than Germans cancel their subscriptions."'

Feherty continues: "Both of these things actually happened to me at Greensboro," he went on, with a further excerpt from his article.

Apparently after Feherty had asked him to be quiet, a fan turned around, "dropped his drawers and mooned me. He definitely mooned me. Right in the middle of the crowd. So I said fair enough, at least that end of you is quiet.

"There must be something in the water up there because later that day I was standing on the fringe of the putting green chipping and answering questions from this old gentleman; a very nice old man. And he asked for my autograph. So I turn around and he's wearing this pair of drawstring shorts but they're around his ankles.

"And he's standing there and he's wearing a pair of Fruit of the Looms that have been rendered antique; holes blown in them and all sort of baggy. They've been rendered more O than Y-front by the passing of, among other things, time. So that's what I'm reduced to now.

"And I'm writing about how I've been attacked in Westchester and abused in Florida. But to be fair, I have to thank George Peper (the editor of Golf) because he really went out on a limb for me. The first two or three columns I wrote, they were very dubious about the style and whether it would go down well over here.

"I was just so close to the edge, you know. I feel if only I were allowed to use more colourful language I could write really interesting stuff."

Then he talked about Darren Clarke and how well he had played at Augusta and what he thought of Gary Player's advice about losing weight. "Darren's a big strong country boy from Dungannon and I guarantee you he'd play horrible if he lost weight," he said.

"He's a fine lad. Marvellous appetite. See him at breakfast and you feel like asking `are you going to eat that or climb it?' "

He went on: "I have read Peter Dobereiner voraciously. And P G Wodehouse. Beautiful language. Thankfully, these days I have the time to read. I work 25 weeks each year for CBS and probably another five or six weeks elsewhere.

"It's wonderful. I get this really busy period from the Masters until the end of October and then very little until the next Masters comes around. People are so much more aware of who I am now than when I was playing. So I do a lot of after-dinner speaking for serious money - 20 minutes to an hour. And I talk about home and people seem to love it.

"I miss home. Not a day goes by that I don't think of it. Anita (his wife) and I had a holiday in Donegal last October and we've talked about it ever since. We can't wait to go back there." Then there is his family in Bangor and his friends there and elsewhere around Britain and Ireland.

He acknowledges that television has given him enormous exposure, more than he ever had as a player. But despite his celebrity, he is determined not to lose touch with reality. "I never refuse an autograph," he mused, "because I remember standing beside players who were better known than I was and people asked for their autograph but not mine."

The shadow of a smile flickered across his tanned face as he concluded: "That can happen again."