Byrne family club together to make it a memorable golfing day

SUNDAY certainly was some day for the Byrne family from Howth in Co Dublin.

While Cyril Byrne was winning the captain's prize at Royal Dublin, his 40 year-old son Colin was Retief Goosen's caddy thousands of miles away at Shinnecock Hills as the South African strode to a magnificent victory in the US Open Championship.

You could hardly ask for more than that and the celebrations in both cases were long and exciting! While Cyril gloried, as every club golfer does, in his achievement, the younger Byrne enjoyed the new found fame and looked forward to banking $112,000, the usual caddy's 10% fee of the winners cheque.

Furthermore, the outcome at Shinnecock Hills was good news for the Smurfit European Open starting over the Smurfit Course at The K-Club on Thursday week for that's when the Goosen-Byrne partnership will next click into action. How the alliance began towards the end of last year and how it evolved makes for a fascinating story.

"Colin worked with Paul Lawrie and they split up around October and after the President's Cup my caddy, Greg, was retiring because his wife was expecting a week or so later and he told me he wasn't going to be caddying any more", Goosen explained. "I wasn't sure of who I should go for. I did ask Fanny Sunesson but she was staying with Nick Faldo.

Then IMG, his management company, mentioned that Colin was available. He and I had always got on well and I asked him and here we are."

As we shall see, Byrne is a very experienced caddy who also happens to be an extremely bright and intelligent man. Caddies come in different shapes and sizes both mentally and physically, some take their job very seriously, others like to live it up on tour and it shows. Those with "a top 50" bag know where to draw the line and Colin fits very comfortably into that category. He has a German girl friend, Andrea, and they enjoy life without ever going that extra inch. Goosen, a somewhat dour and humourless individual, understood and appreciated this.

"Colin is a very relaxed guy by nature", he enthused. "I mean, he tells you what he thinks but at the end of the shot he wants you to do what you feel you have to do. He's not trying to talk you into doing what he thinks you should do. You know, Colin is more relaxed out there than me. He's just one of those guys that nothing really puts him off."

Even for one as unflappable as Colin Byrne, the atmosphere at Shinneock on Sunday with just about everybody in the typically raucous New York rooting for Phil Mickelson had to have been intimidating and electrifying. But he kept his emotions under control and got on with doing a job of which he has every reason to be very proud.

"Obviously the fans were with Phil and you might say it was very bad etiquette from them," said Colin later. "One guy yelled out, 'it's yours to lose', stuff like that. He doesn't hear it, it doesn't faze him at all. Ernie reacted at the 14th although I don't know what he said. That's what you expect over here. You face it with resignation. What can you do they don't like to be beaten. Retief is not emotional and doesn't react to stuff."

The walk up 18 with a two shot advantage might have looked like a victory procession but Byrne insisted it was far from that: "It was good but you're still trying to do a job and it's not over. You can screw up 18, it was two shots but you could still make a mess of it. He was in between clubs on the approach. So you're trying to work it out and keep your eye on the ball so to speak. All in all, the course suited Retief. He likes fast greens and those greens were verging on the ridiculous. It was like putting on a patio."

Byrne was well aware of the incredible putting display by his man down the stretch that more than anything else enabled him to capture his second US Open in four years. When told he had eleven single putts, Colin exclaimed with a small smile: "Is that all, I thought he had about twenty. He holed a lot and that's what you have to do. It's a sign of confidence if you can do it. He wasn't great around Masters time and has his ups and downs like everyone else. He seems to be seasonal but I knew when I saw this course that it suited him and I think he did as well. I think it reminded him of Southern Hills. They all covered the main man and we just snuck up in our slippers. It's nice to sneak in around the back."

There appeared to be many pivotal moments during that tension packed homeward journey on Sunday but Colin picked out the par five 16th as the most crucial of all: "We decided to lay up and leave ourselves the right number for a wedge which we almost did. He was edging that way and I definitely supported him and that was crucial even if we did make a lot of putts. The fact that he holed the putt again, the thinking was so clear. We figured what was happening with Mickelson at 17, obviously it was a help, but again you have to do your own thing. Any pin he missed was on the right side, never on the tight side."

With a big laugh, Byrne (a single figure handicapper at Royal Dublin) claimed it seemed like he had been caddying for two decades. Before Goosen and Lawrie, he was with Greg Turner and briefly before that with Darren Clarke ("now that was an error of judgment, I ditched him for somebody worse, I think I learned by my mistake").

It will be readily recalled how Goosen missed a two footer for the title on the 18th green at Southern Hills in 2001 and didn't clinch it until the following day by beating Mark Brooks in the play-off. He had the Belgian sports analyst Jos Vanstiphout to help on that occasion but that relationship has since broken up. Retief does his own thinking these days and it certainly paid off on Sunday.

"I wasn't letting my guard down, I knew what happened the previous time, it's not over 'till it's over", he stressed. "I probably putted better than Southern Hills and that's what you need to do at these tournaments. These greens were unbelievably fast and drying out and getting bumpy. To keep holing putts was the key. And I think it was easier playing with Ernie Els rather than Phil. There would have been a lot more going around. A couple of times when you made a bogey, you'd hear somebody say 'here comes Phil'. You expect that out there and I expect that people will be rooting for him and not me, which is quite natural. If this tournament was in South Africa, they would be rooting for me.

"I'm quite used to being the underdog and it doesn't really bother me."