Golfing Disasters Part 10: Before his victory in last week's Senior PGA Championship, if readers of this column thought about Mike Reid at all then they probably wondered what ever happened to the firing mechanism of the player who became widely known as "Radar" in the 1980s due to the accuracy of his driving.

What Reid lacked in distance, and it was plenty, he made up for with precision. Mind you, he usually had to cede top spot in the accuracy tables to Calvin Peete. Reid was number one in 1980 but Peete was the PGA Tour's straightest hitter in each of the following ten seasons with Reid as number two for five of them. Labels stick, however, and perhaps because of the easy alliteration, it was always Radar Reid.

Despite all the fairways he hit, Radar won only two PGA Tour titles but he came desperately close to taking a major before stumbling at the end of a remarkable PGA Championship in 1989. The tournament was staged at Kemper Lakes in Chicago and a month short of his 60th birthday, Arnold Palmer was making his 34th attempt to lift the only major to elude him. In front of an ever-growing gallery, he made five consecutive birdies on the front nine and topped the leaderboard after a birdie on the 15th.

Bogeys on the final two holes meant that he signed for a four-under-par 68 but his efforts generated far more of a buzz than those of the first round leaders. Reid and Leonard Thompson, who both carded 66, were not players to generate Palmer-like hysteria.

Palmer and Thompson faded but Reid added rounds of 67 and 70 to move three ahead with one round to play. His nerve had come under the spotlight earlier that season when he briefly led during the final nine of the Masters but double-bogied the 15th and finished sixth.

"Call it a learning experience, a stepping-stone rather than a tombstone," was his verdict at the time. "As Fuzzy Zoeller once said, 'I was happy to be in a position to choke.' "

The final round at Kemper Lakes would show whether he really had learned at Augusta. He three-putted the fifth for only his third bogey of the tournament and suddenly five players were within two shots. Payne Stewart, gaining ground ever since an opening 74, was four behind at the turn and told ABC course reporter Jerry Pate that he could still come home in 31 to win the tournament.

When Reid birdied 10 and 11 that looked unlikely and, even with Stewart birdieing four of the final five holes for a back nine of 32, Reid had a two-stroke lead on the 16th tee. What a time for the Radar to go on the blink. "I was trying to cut my drive into the middle of the fairway and the Russians must have been transmitting. My radar got zapped," he explained. Reid's attempted cut became a push into water and he had to scramble for a bogey five.

His rangefinder faltered on the 17th as he overshot the par three. After chipping to 15 feet he putted two feet past and then pushed the return outside the right lip. One ahead with two to play had become one behind with one to play.

Russian transmissions must have ceased by the time Reid reached the 18th tee as he split the fairway with his drive and hit the approach to seven feet. However he pulled the putt left and instead of Reid it was Stewart who had his first major with Reid, Andy Bean and Curtis Strange sharing second.

"Where can you go around here to have a good cry?" asked Reid in the press centre afterwards. Without waiting for an answer he broke down on the spot. And he didn't win in America again until the Senior PGA ten days ago. There it was Reid who covered the back nine in 32 and benefited from a blunder by a certain Jerry Pate to win the title.