Golf: Johnson has best week of his life

THE little-known Alan Johnson will play the Worksop teenager, Mark Foster, in the 36-hole final of the English amateur championship at Moortown tomorrow.

Johnson, a 24-year-old whose job is to hand out tokens and fill up buckets of balls at a driving range in west London, continued the most remarkable week of his life by knocking out the Stoke greenkeeper, Mark Keeling, at the 20th hole and then the experienced Chris Poxon 3 and 2 yesterday.

Foster, 18, last year's England boy captain and one of the country's outstanding prospects, stormed past the host club member, Jon Loosemore, 5 and 3 and then the former British Amateur runner-up, Graham Homewood, 2 and 1.

Johnson, not even a member of the current Middlesex side, is making only his second appearance in the event and his aim when he travelled up to Leeds was simply to do better than he had two years ago.

'I lost in the first round then, so when I won my opening match here I felt that anything else was a bonus,' he said. 'Prior to this week, the best thing I had done in golf was probably finishing sixth in the Ealing Scratch Open.

'I normally get uptight, but I told myself just to enjoy it whatever happened. The semi-final was probably the most solid I have ever played.'