Remesy races into Ryder reckoning

THERE is a real chance of 40-year-old Jean-Francois Remesy making Europe's Ryder Cup team after yesterday becoming the first home winner of the French Open for 35 years.

Six years on from being close to giving up the sport following a 12th consecutive visit to the qualifying school, Remesy leapt from 24th in the cup race to seventh with a massive seven-stroke victory the biggest of the season so far at Le Golf National near Paris.

"I don't realise for the moment what it means," he said after being thrown in the lake by the 18th green. Look back a few years and I could not imagine this. Other than a major I can't win anything bigger."

Graeme McDowell, winner of the Italian Open in May and runner-up in the Diageo, finished with a new course record of 64 and moved up from 30th to fourth. It also earned him a £2,000 Rolex watch for the low round of the weekend.

The 24-year-old, a member of the winning Walker Cup team in America only three years ago, is now 13th in the Ryder Cup standings.

"I said to my dad last night I couldn't get it going on this course," he said. "Any time I hit it in the thick stuff I was in big trouble, but this time I was only in it once and got on a roll.

"The Ryder Cup was never a goal this year and I still need to play some good golf between now and then.

"My goal was to win in six months and finish top 30 in Europe. I've moved the goalposts now to top 15 and win again.

"I'm a goal-orientated kind of person and I react well of those kind of things. I'm hitting all of them on the nose."

Remesy had won only one of 203 previous tour events, the 1999 Estoril Open when he was not even a member of the circuit, and it was only after a series of visits to a sports psychologist he decided to stick at golf. He is now fourth on the Order of Merit.