Dougherty happy to be care free

Nick Dougherty returned to action today for the first time since the biggest win of his career – happy to be free of any inner soul-searching.

The 25-year-old from Liverpool is second in the European Ryder Cup table thanks to his victory at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews two weeks ago.

Dougherty, now in Vilamoura for the Portugal Masters at the Oceanico Victoria club, knew he could not really afford to throw away another title chance as he came down the closing stretch in Scotland.

“If I had lost I would have had to ask some serious questions of myself,” he said. “Lovely career, but maybe I’m not the world-beater I wanted (to be).

“It was huge for me. For one thing it’s got me into the HSBC Champions in Shanghai next month and that’s very important – not just because it’s big money and lots of Ryder Cup points, but because I was third there behind David Howell and Tiger (Woods) two years ago.”

Dougherty also has the Volvo Masters at Valderrama in two weeks’ time and accepts it is “feasible” that a Ryder Cup debut could be virtually in the bag by the end of the year.

Victory on Sunday, for example, would take him to more than a million cup points and four years ago Ian Poulter took the last qualifying spot with just over 1.1million.

Playing just behind Dougherty in today’s first round was the player who finished two places behind him in Scotland – 18-year-old Rory McIlroy.

The Irish youngster, who was playing in the amateur Walker Cup a month ago, followed that up with a fourth-place finish in Madrid last Sunday to clinch a European Tour spot for next year without the need to visit the qualifying school.

McIlroy is also seventh in the Ryder Cup standings as a result, but said: “Obviously I’m not focused on the Ryder Cup at the minute.

“That’s not a huge goal of mine because I have 20 more years to play Ryder Cups.”

He has another chance this week to be the youngest winner in Tour history, but is up against a field that includes 2006 Ryder Cup quintet Lee Westwood, David Howell, Paul McGinley, Darren Clarke and Robert Karlsson and also world number nine Retief Goosen.

Amazingly, at 95th on the Order of Merit McIlroy is already above Clarke and Howell. They are 129th and 136th respectively, but still have a chance to prevent this from being easily the worst year of their European Tour careers.

Howell, third behind Padraig Harrington and Paul Casey last season, has never finished lower than 74th since gaining a card in 1995, while Clarke has not come lower than last year’s 43rd since he was 112th in his rookie season of 1991.