Parry sobers up for Mount Juliet

The last sighting of Craig Parry at a golf tournament was in Seattle. He had just won a million US Dollars and he was about to head for the airport and get “blotto”.

Four weeks later the little Australian is back – at Mount Juliet in Ireland, sober and trying to win another million dollars and another world title.

Nice work if you can get it.

Parry is part of the elite 65-strong field for the American Express World Championship, but whatever happens this week and for the rest of the year it has been a memorable 12 months for the 36-year-old from Sunshine in Victoria.

“The first week at home after the win (in the NEC Invitational) was just all media,” he said.

“We probably had three to four hundred e-mails. They came in from all over the world. It’s been an unbelievable experience.

“The Victoria cricket team stopped up in Northern Territory and watched the golf for the last couple of hours. I’ve had people saying they were riding exercise bikes for two hours because they were just watching the television and just enjoying it.

“The second week I had time to relax and last week I started practising again.

“My game’s definitely not as good as it was at Sahalee, but we will wait and see. I played three rounds at home and three here, so my expectations are to just go out and play well. If it puts me in position to win the tournament that’s great.”

The win was Parry’s first on the US Tour after 15 years of trying and it followed Kevin Sutherland’s surprise success in the first world championship event of the season, the Accenture match play. He had been trying for 11 years to win in the States.

In between came the four majors and while three of them went to the stars of the game – Tiger Woods the Masters and US Open, Ernie Els the Open – the US PGA championship brought another of the chorus line into centre stage.

That was Rich Beem and he too is at Mount Juliet looking to strike it rich again.

It might surprise golf fans to learn that Beem wants a porch for Christmas.

That is what anybody reading the transcript of his interview at the American Express World Championship would believe.

But what he actually said was “Porsche”.

The confusion came when the American was asked whether he had treated himself to anything since his win.

Beem, having remembered buying a swimming pool and having his back garden landscaped following his victory in the International tournament earlier this summer, responded: “Just a big diamond necklace for my wife. I’m hoping to get a Porsche, though, for Christmas.”

Or maybe he did say “porch”. He could have it made out of gold if he wanted to.