Hamilton, Haeggman wins a bolt from the blue

GOLF'S capacity for throwing up shock results never ceases to amaze. Who could have forecast Ben Curtis and Shaun Micheel would win last year's US Open and PGA Championships?

Last weekend's tournaments were down the pecking order but yet again the champions of the Honda Classic in Florida and the Qatar Masters came out of the blue.

Journeyman Todd Hamilton triumphed in the Honda Classic on the US Tour. In Europe, Joakim Haeggman, the first Swede to play in the Ryder Cup in 1993 but so much out of the picture subsequently that he was one of Sam Torrance's backroom boys at The Belfry in 2001, captured the Qatar Masters.

Hamilton's was the more extraordinary result. At least we had heard of Haeggman. Nobody seemed more bemused than Hamilton as he confessed: "A guy plays his rear end off for a year and then a guy plays his rear end off for a week and gets the same amount of money. It's crazy."

Hamilton was referring to the fact that he had his best ever season in Japan in 2003 and made a shade more than the $900,000 he picked up for his win in the Honda over a single weekend.

Clearly, it was taking a while for it all to sink in for a man who grew up in Biggsville, Illinois, a little town of 1,500 people. There were only 300 students in the local school and Hamilton acknowledged that there wasn't "much going on back there". So he hightailed it out of Biggsville at the age of 26 and moved to Dallas, unable to get on to the US Tours but making "a nice living in Asia". All he wanted was to play golf and he didn't much mind where.

At long last, a visit to the US Tour School in the autumn opened up the opportunity of playing his home circuit and it all slotted into place at the weekend. Having led by four with a round to go, Hamilton stood on the 17th tee on Sunday at 10 under par. A glance at the leaderboard told him that Davis Love III was 11 under. His lead, and almost certainly a rosy future, were gone unless he did something dramatic. He got the birdie he needed at the long 17th with a 12 foot putt that tied it up and he then hit a cracking drive down the last.

"I birdied it on Saturday with an eight iron from 160 yards and I had the same club again so I was confident," Hamilton explained. "I was trying for the first third of the green to give myself a chance but the ball drifted left in the wind and when I heard the crowd hollering, I knew it must be pretty close." He then experienced the kind of anguish that every golfer, from hacker to pro, knows only too well. Your ball looks stone dead from a distance but as you draw closer it seems to get further and further away from the flag! When he reached the green, he realised it was no tap-in but he had a few strange ways of coping with the pressure.

"I bit my lip a couple of times to settle myself", he said. "I was feeling a little emotional and I did it to wake myself up. It was a good bite but I don't think I drew blood.

"Then I just pictured when I was a kid how I used to putt in the house to the table leg. I just pictured the hole as a table leg and I hit the table leg."

The rewards for Hamilton's amazing victory are innumerable among them, a near three-year exemption on the US Tour, a place in next week's hugely lucrative Players Championship at Sawgrass, followed by the Masters at Augusta in April.

In Europe, Joakim Haeggman won't enjoy those kinds of privileges for winning in Qatar although he has at least clinched his playing privileges for the best part of three years. Not for him the Players or the Masters, just the satisfaction of proving to himself that he could still compete meaningfully after being a virtual non-entity since his last victory back in 1997.

Their respective successes have also done wonders for their world rankings. Hamilton has been bumped up 58 places to 38th while Haeggman improved by exactly 100 spots to 123rd. The Swede is now talking in terms of regaining his Ryder Cup place and promises never to try ice hockey again after breaking his leg in December 2002 and dislocating his shoulder and breaking ribs in 2004!

This week the European Tour goes even further afield to Singapore for the Caltex Masters with the field headed by Colin Montgomerie and containing two Irishmen, Paul McGinley and Peter Lawrie.