My second European Tour victory

AS I write this, the day after the final round of the Open Championship, it is only starting to sink in what an eventful few weeks I have just had.

The last six weeks have been spent on the road, starting with the US Open at Torrey Pines and finishing with The Open, and in that time I have managed to record my second, and biggest, win on the European Tour as well as teeing off in the third last group out at Royal Birkdale in the 137th championship.

Starting with the victory at the European Open there are a few people I’d like to thank.

After coming through the 36-hole qualifier at Sunningdale I decided against playing a practice round at the London Club and instead enjoyed a day at the tennis at Wimbledon with my wife Jo to celebrate her birthday.

It did cross my mind to pull out of the London Club but my wife said why don’t you just keep going, as I was playing well – so I did.

I have worked with StrokeAverage.com over the past seven years and Chris Sells and John Franks there advised me that the Heritage Course should suit me down to the ground and they obviously also got it right!

To play a course blind, as they say, is never easy and you have to have complete trust in your caddy and there is no way on earth that I could have done what I did without the hard work that Adam (Marrow) put in.

The only other time I hadn’t played a practice round was in the Champions Tournament in Shanghai last November when I lost in a play-off to Phil Mickelson and, there, I opened with three 68s so sometimes things have a funny way of working out.

The first round itself was an incredible experience.

Everything was ticking along nicely on the front nine with four birdies and just one dropped shot but then everything just clicked into place and the hole looked as big as a bucket. I managed to finish off with six straight birdies.

It was all quite surreal making one after the other but I felt really calm all through the day and carried that on the rest of the week.

I drove the ball as well as I’ve ever done and if I did miss a fairway I was still in a position to go for the green and obviously, with the help of Mark Roe, my short game has come on in leaps and bounds over the past few months.

To finish as I did, holing that bunker shot for a seven-shot win, put the icing on the cake.

I had birdied the last hole the first three days so I was determined to finish on a high and I must have been a little bit pumped as my six-iron, from 191 yards, went through the back into the sand. I said to myself ‘let’s not do anything silly here’ and then, about four or five feet short of the flag, I thought ‘that’s got a chance’ and it was a dream to see it disappear.

It was a phenomenal week and to break 70, in some really testing conditions, every day 
was particularly satisfying.

Talking of testing conditions, Royal Birkdale was a real examination. 

I had played the course once about 10 years ago but decided to limit my warm-up to nine holes on the Tuesday and Wednesday as this seems to work best for me.

The first couple of days were steady enough but then I finally made some putts over the back nine on Saturday to put myself into real contention.

To give you some idea of the strength of the wind I had about 160 yards to the front of the 10th hole and came up short with a three-iron which I normally hit around 225 yards.

Unfortunately, I then three-putted for my first double bogey of the week but I managed to hang in there and three birdies coming home gave me a 71 to leave me just five behind Greg Norman.

The final day saw me paired with the 2003 champion Ben Curtis but unfortunately things didn’t turn out as planned.

The last, where I ran up an eight, was particularly disappointing as it saw me drop out of the top 10 – but the whole experience was an amazing one.

The crowds were absolutely tremendous and the reception all the way round the course, on to every tee and every green, was like nothing else.

With a month to go the Ryder Cup dream is still alive but for now, after six weeks of solid tournament golf, it’s time to put the feet up and have a well-earned break.

I look forward to bringing you up to date with my defence of the KLM Open, and maybe some good news ahead of Valhalla, next month.