Beem beams back down to reality after USPGA glory

Rich Beem was starting to get an idea this week of how life changes after winning a USPGA Championship. One of his first stops after the biggest victory of his career was to the Magnolia Hi-Fi store in Bellevue, near Seattle, where he used to sell car stereos and mobile phones. Calls poured in from across the country from reporters wanting to talk to anyone who used to work with the new champion. He even took one call himself: "Magnolia Hi-Fi, this is Rich Beem, how can I help you?"

Scheduled to appear on the Today television show yesterday, Beem also went window shopping for expensive cars and found it amusing that the salesman had no interest in helping someone dressed in shorts, scuffed trainers and an Atlanta Braves baseball cap. "No one recognised me, which was totally fine."

If his life around him has changed, Beem does not look at himself any differently. "I'm not going to wake up and fully expect to conquer the world of golf," he said. "I'm a better player than I've ever been in my life, but it's just golf. It's not like I cured cancer. This is just a fun game, and I've been very good at it the last month. Some days you're the windshield, some days you're the bug. And of late, I've been the windshield."

Beem, who played his first practice round for the NEC Invitational at Sahalee Country Club here on Tuesday, will not be the favourite when the event gets under way today. Despite his first runner-up finish in a major, Tiger Woods remains the man to beat in every tournament he plays, and he is trying to become the first player since Walter Hagen 75 years ago to win the same tournament four years in a row.

A total of 19 Europeans are in the 78-man field at Sahalee, the course where Vijay Singh won his first major title four years ago. For the last three years the NEC tournament has been limited, primarily to members of the Ryder and President's Cup teams.

Now it has been widened to include everyone in the world's top 50 and winners of designated events – which has helped earn places for Justin Rose, Paul Lawrie, Jose Maria Olazabal, the Danes Anders and Soren Hansen, the German Tobias Dier and Northern Ireland's Graeme McDowell.

Sergio Garcia and Jesper Parnevik make their second appearances in the event. The pair were controversially excluded in 2000 and 2001 because the European tour opted to use up their allocation on places based on the Order of Merit – and they lost out because of their US Tour commitments.