ROBIN DAVEY SAYS: Fairy tale finish at Masters

1:11pm Tuesday 15th April 2008

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AT a time when top golf appears to be increasingly about money, millions and millions to be won, how refreshing it is to show that romance is not dead.

For once Tiger Woods couldn't quite make it, his game strangely out of sorts for a player of his exceptional ability and the US Masters fell instead to South African Trevor Immelman.

Not since Raymond Floyd back in 1977 had a player led from start to finish and it was, therefore, only right that in the small hours of Monday morning Immelman received the splendid green jacket in the Butler cabin.

All those years of sacrifice by his family as they mortgaged and remortgaged to fund his golf and send him abroad had been worthwhile.

Not just that, but he even survived a cancer scare in December when a tumour was found only for it to be mercifully benign.

And so on to the Masters and a little blip on the final day when he found water on that glorious 15th hole, but he remained steadfast and focussed to the very end and was a worthy winner by three shots.

Now attention will rapidly switch to the Celtic Manor next week and the launch of the Wales Open, the first official tournament to be played on the new Ryder Cup course.

The naming of the Ryder Cup captain for the historic Wales date will follow - Sandy Lyle or Jose Maria Olazabal? - and it will be all systems go for 2010.