Els tells Bjorn he now has the game to win majors

THOMAS BJORN envisages the night when he wakes up and sees a golf ball rolling at him like the biggest snowball in the world.

The Dane was, of course, referring to his reaction to the three shots he required to extricate himself from the bunker at the 16th at Royal St Georges on Sunday, the golfing disaster that more or less cost him the Open Championship.

Bjorn explained: “That’s the way you are going to feel and you will have nightmares about it once in a while and when you wake up in the middle of the night, the head does spin a little. That’s the way it has to be and that shows how much it means to me.”

Just as Mark Roe, the unfortunate victim of the card-marking fiasco on Saturday, had been remarkably candid and frank during a chat with the media at Portmarnock on Tuesday, Bjorn was equally so yesterday as he continued his preparations for the Nissan Irish Open beginning this morning.

One might have expected him to be down in the dumps. Not a bit of it.

“I learned last week how good I can be,” Bjorn said. “That may sound cocky but I know in myself that I can play with the best golfers in the world. That means a lot to me. But those two shots on Thursday had nothing to do with it. Championships are won on the back nine on Sunday, that is when it gets tough. Maybe I wasn’t tough enough. Maybe things were happening a little too fast. I felt my game was good enough but it didn’t hold up in the end.”

Bjorn has a feisty temperament but it was clear from the outset of yesterday’s interview that it was going to be that and nothing more. There would be no interrogation. He spoke forcefully and entertained no argument.

“I have no other reason than to be proud of what I did,” he insisted. “I felt very good about my golf and I have every confidence in myself for the future. I am still disappointed. If you are not disappointed after throwing away a three stroke lead over the last four holes of the Open, there must be something wrong with you. Sunday night wasn’t the easiest, Monday night was a little bit easier and last night was a little bit easier again.”

Bjorn admitted he was asked a few funny questions, as he played yesterday’s pro-am, and then there was the kid who called out, “hey, there’s the guy that lost the Open”.

Bjorn smiled and said: “If he had been 25 years old, you would want to give him one on the head but he was 10 so you just go, ‘oh well’. I walked in my house on Sunday night and my two four-month-old babies were sitting there. I sat down and looked at them and they both smiled. They have both just started smiling and that put things in perspective for me.”

Inevitably, though, the conversation centred on the double bogey at the 16th on Sunday evening. Had he played the right club, had he been too bold, had he tried to finesse the shot too much? He took it all on the chin: “I didn’t go for the pin, I tried to hit six or seven yards left and I got caught out. The wind had just turned. When you stand on that tee, it is the only hole where you feel the shelter off the grandstand. It wasn’t the best of golf shots but it wasn’t a poor shot. If that was a poor shot, I will live with it. I came up there and looked at that bunker. My first thought was having a bunker with about an inch lip when all the others had about three feet of lip on them. I walked in and realised straightaway that here was completely different sand. I am not trying to blame anyone for anything. I wasn’t in any way trying to be cute, but it was such a difficult bunker shot under the circumstances.”

Presumably he was referring to Tiger Woods when observing “there is one guy who, when he plays his best, is better than anybody else,” but he stressed: “There is nobody out there I can’t beat with my best game.” And then Bjorn produced the punch line, the message more than any other that confirmed for him he had really arrived: “A guy called me on Monday night who is one of the finest players in the world and said ‘now you know what everyone else out here has known for a long time: you have the game to win majors’.” And who might that have been?

“Ernie,” said Thomas with a distinct touch of pride and satisfaction.