Golf: Long wait worthwhile for Perks

At the age of 35 New Zealander Craig Perks has waited a long time to be golf’s newest star.

But that is what he is after winning the Players Championship in Florida - and winning it on Oscar night with a finish that the Hollywood film studios would reject for being too far-fetched.

A chip in for eagle on the 16th, a 28-foot birdie putt on the 17th, another chip in on the last? And all this from the man ranked 203rd in the world? Not even Kevin Costner in ‘Tin Cup’ would do that.

But Perks did it and because he did it he will play the first major championship of his life at the Masters in a fortnight.

‘‘I’ve never wanted to go to Augusta until I was playing there,’’ he said.

‘‘Now I am - and I can’t wait.’’

Perks does not want to be just making up the numbers there either. Or at the next four Open championships, which his million-dollar victory also guaranteed him.

‘‘I hope this is not my defining moment,’’ he said.

‘‘I hope I can build on this. For all that this win brings with it what means most is just showing that I can win on the US Tour.

‘‘I’ve worked so hard and travelled to towns you’ve never heard of, but I knew I could be successful and this shows I can play with the best players in the world.’’

Perks, a table tennis champion as a youngster, left home at 18 to take up a golf scholarship in America.

But he was 26 before he felt good enough to turn professional and it was another seven years before he made it onto the US Tour.

This was his first victory nobody had ever made the prestigious Players Championship their maiden win - and to achieve it with one putt in the last three holes made it worth the long wait.

Defending champion Tiger Woods finished only 14th and, for the first time since the 1999 Open at Carnoustie, failed to break 70 in a tournament.

But without knowing it, Woods played a significant part in Perks’ success.

The two played together in the second last group on the final day in Miami earlier this month and Perks, who finished fifth, glimpsed what it is like to be the world number one.

‘‘I learned a great deal. I saw how he acted and reacted to things and I was able to use that to my advantage,’’ said Perks.

‘‘Very few of us have his physical skills or his mental skills, but I took from his focus.

‘‘I mean, people were absolutely screaming on every shot after he birdied the first three holes, but it was like he was nearly playing in a dome where there was no sound.

‘‘It seems like he doesn’t see or hear all that screaming. It is straight ahead and that’s why he has been so successful in the lead or around the lead. It seems like nothing bothers him.’’

Perks believes his own greatest quality is a never-say-die attitude.

A week ago he hit two balls out of bounds on his very first hole at Bay Hill.

‘‘I know a lot of players who would have packed it in, but I hung in there and made the cut.’’

Perks had an incredible seven bogeys in his final round at Sawgrass. But with everybody else having problems too on a course Woods said was like playing the Masters with US Open-style rough he hung in there.

And now he can hang around in all the best places. Starting with Augusta.

Trinidad’s Stephen Ames still has to watch it on television, though.

The former European tour player, winner of the Benson & Hedges International at The Oxfordshire in 1996, thought his brilliant closing 67 might be good enough to make him the shock winner of the title.

It did not, but a runners-up cheque for €679,000 eased the pain.