'Big Easy' creates white-knuckle journey to glory

South African's nerve-wracking play-off victory proves his pedigree for the big stage as world No 1 Woods hints at what might have been

The fear was that with the Big Cat away pygmies would play out the last day of the 131st Open. But libel actions have been launched for less and it is probably just as well Ernie Els, the normally sunny big man from South Africa, is not the type to seek out a callous lawyer.

If he was, even the late George Carman would have been pushed to mount the defence case successfully against charges of criminally loose talk. Els wasn't just the central, potentially tragic figure in a tournament denuded by the competitive exile of the world's No 1 player. He was the catalyst for one of the most extraordinary climaxes to the oldest major tournament, an unprecedented scramble for victory which left him an exhausted but finally ecstatic champion.

Els, the thoroughbred contender left standing after the savage acts of God which ended the challenge of Tiger Woods 24 hours earlier, first endangered his chance of winning the claret jug ­ and a third major to add to his two US Opens ­ when something that might have passed easily for a brainstorm on the 16th green of the last round cost him double-bogey.

That dragged him into the four-way play-off with the Frenchman Thomas Levet and the Australians Stuart Appleby and Steve Elkington and wiped away much of the awe that greeted his stupendous recovery from a bunker on the 13th. Yet if Els, ironically nicknamed "Big Easy", turned what should have been a triumphant march down the last fairways into a white-knuckled ordeal, he could not be accused of down-sizing the old tournament in the wake of the Tiger's submission to a Scottish tempest.

Last night, in gentle sunshine and light airs, Els sailed golf into an epic test of nerve and spirit. What he couldn't do, though, was dispel the idea that the inconvenience of Woods may well provoke long and sustained retribution in the coming years. Tiger, cut to the bone by the humiliation of Saturday's 81, responded yesterday with a 65. It was a piece golf which was utterly without significance in the melodramatic climax of this particular Open, but Woods, it was plain enough, wasn't playing for the day but the next 20-odd years.

As it turned out, and with no disrespect to the winner, he left a marker that continued to dominate the world of golf 24 hours after his worst day on the course of a major tournament. "Yes," Woods said, "it was very important to me to score well today. I played my heart out in brutal conditions on Saturday, but I didn't play well enough to stay in the tournament. So I had to show that I had come to terms with what had happened to me. I know that I can get over this. You know, I never go in the bag."

The drama was created by the fact that the beautifully talented Els did, for a while at least, just when it most seemed that he was moving out of the grip so long inflicted by Woods on players who have to operate under a shadow that had been increasing so relentlessly over recent years.

Both Els and the world No 2 Phil Mickelson, came into the tournament attempting to deal with the charge that they had given up on, the challenge of truly competing with the man being hailed as the greatest golfer who ever lived by such a luminary as the five-times Open champion Tom Watson. That may have been part of the reason why the extravagantly gifted Mickelson never managed even a toe-hold in the tournament which Woods seemed to hold comfortably in the palm of his hand before walking into Saturday's gale-driven rain, and perhaps why Els lingered so agonisingly on the point of triumph last night.

What Woods was saying was that it is possible to have an occasionally ambush or two, and especially on a Scottish course, without suffering the kind of wound which at the highest level of competitive sport sometimes never heals. Curiously, in view of the fierce debate over the claims on history of Woods and Jack Nicklaus, the Golden Bear performed a similar gesture at Royal St George's, Sandwich, 21 years ago. Troubled by news of a car crash involving one of his sons in America, Nicklaus rocketed to an 83 which shocked the golfing world. But reassured by good news from the hospital, he returned to work the following day ­ and shot 66. The parallels of greatness were unmissable here yesterday.

But if Els wavered at times in the void left by Woods, he showed, too, a refusal to capsize finally after three times apparently surrendering his chance. In the end it came down to the rawest test of nerve with the man who staggered with him to that final questioning of the spirit, the 33-year-old Levet, son of a Paris doctor who had come from nowhere in the thinking of the golfing cognoscenti to the very edge of one of the game's most stunning results. Els had twice earlier turned his back on victory, but this time he gathered himself and produced the shots that rescued him from the possibility of a golfing hell.

He produced a bunker shot on the 18th hole ­ the first of sudden death after the Australians had been burned away ­ which exceeded even the splendour of his recovery on the 13th in regular play, a shot which suddenly seemed to have occurred half a life time earlier. And then he delivered the winning putt, before lapsing in to something that threatened to be a coma of relief.

A few months ago he left Augusta traumatised by his failure to stay with Woods in the final stages of the Masters. When he was pushed into a rash and destructive shot going to the 14th hole at Augusta, he knew that he had failed again to rise about the pressure exerted by the Tiger, and he shook his head in the deepest of despair. Last night that expression was beginning to etch itself around his eyes as one chance after another slipped away.

But then there was only the most spontaneous smile in golf, and the knowledge that this time he had marched beyond the shadow of arguably the greatest player the game has ever known.

Whether he could have done it if the Tiger had been a combatant is another story for another day. It was maybe enough that Els was anything but a pygmy in the moment that mattered most.