Lawrie entitled to catch himself performing a rain dance

Lewine Mair, The Telegraph, 25 September 2003

Driving rain, a howling wind and a sky that promises there is worse to come. For Paul Lawrie, this is the ideal scenario and one he would be happy to face when he tees up at 10.06 this morning at Carnoustie, the course where he won the 1999 Open.

"When I wake up to a bad day," began the Aberdonian, who captured this Dunhill Links tournament two years ago, "I look out of the window and think to myself, 'I know I can handle this and half the field can't'. A wave of confidence comes over me and, ridiculous though this might sound, I feel taller."

Meanwhile, America's Shaun Micheel, who was blowing on his hands after escaping yesterday's angry elements, is looking for something at the other end of the spectrum. The PGA champion, who is in Britain for a first time, wants to wake up "to sunshine and 70 degrees" on a day when he is due off Carnoustie's 10th tee at 10.28.

There was a time when Lawrie, who, like Micheel, plays St Andrews tomorrow and Kingsbarns on Saturday, loathed the label 'good bad weather golfer'. He thought people were suggesting that was all he was. Nowadays, though, he cheerfully admits: "I got that wrong and I've learned to see the tag as a compliment."

Out of the blue, Lawrie volunteered that there were plenty of things he had got wrong across his golfing years "but I've never minded holding my hands up and saying as much".

He went back to that time in 1996 when he embarked on a spree of "reckless spending" after winning his first tournament on tour, the Catalan Open.

He purchased 12 cars in less than two years, speeding out of the showroom in one fancy new model after another. His wife, Marian, put her foot down, too, only hers was not on the accelerator. She told him it was a ridiculous waste of their money "and," says her spouse, "she was right."

In May and June of this year, after he had been reading about the 30 extra yards which Ernie Els was getting off the tee with his Titleist driver, Lawrie went to Callaway, his sponsors, and said that he wanted the freedom to try other equipment in tournament conditions.

Very sensibly, Peter Harrison, the head man at Callaway UK, did not attempt to block the player's path. Lawrie spent a couple of months experimenting before returning to Harrison and saying he wanted to get back under the Callaway umbrella.

"It very quickly became evident that I had been wrong again," Lawrie said. "The equipment Callaway were producing was still the best." This week, he is using their new 'black' ball and prototype ERC Fusion driver.

Yesterday, mind, he was to be seen wielding a vintage 1953 persimmon driver with 1.62 ball as he renamed Carnoustie's sixth hole 'Hogan's Alley' by way of commemorating the 50th anniversary of Ben Hogan's Open Championship victory. A long driving contest was part of the celebrations, with Lawrie hitting 245 yards with the persimmon club to the 251 yards of Arjun Atwal. After the pair had played through the sixth, the wind turned and those who followed failed to make any headway with the golfing antique.

This Dunhill Links tournament, as Padraig Harrington was saying yesterday, is meant to be a bit of a show. "It's not a normal 72-hole event and it should never be treated as a normal event," continued last year's winner. "OK, some people don't particularly like the pro-am format but, if you look at the good points, it's tremendous. When you are a professional it makes you feel special that the celebrities want to come and play with you."

In what would have been music to the sponsors' ears, for Dunhill have taken their share of flak for this extraordinary, three-course extravaganza, Harrington went on to say that plenty of the professionals could not believe their luck. "We have the chance to play with some of our greatest heroes over three of the finest courses in the world and we're getting paid massive amounts of money for the privilege," he said. Five million dollars to be precise.

Jodie Kidd listened, bemused, to Harrington's comments. It was, she said, precisely the same for her as she recognised one golfing superstar after another, starting with Harrington himself.

The series of wedges the Irishman was hitting on the range at Kingsbarns - he was dropping them all within a couple of feet of the target - were such as to leave the supermodel drooling.