487 yards of cruel farce

Facial expressions, rivalling the best of Marcel Marceau, mirrored his every move. And for bemused onlookers, there was the emotion-wringing problem of deciding whether they were witnessing high drama or cruel farce.

Nothing quite like the antics of Jean Van de Velde had ever occurred in the final round of the game's oldest championship. And it had much to do with the ubiquitous Barry Burn, which the father-figure of modern golf writing, Bernard Darwin, described grandly as circumbendicus - a word you won't find in the Oxford English Dictionary.

Mind you, Sam Snead fared worse in the 1939 US Open at Spring Mill, Philadelphia. Par figures on the last two holes would have given him a total of 281 to equal the championship record and secure a triumph that would ultimately elude him for his entire career.

Standing on the 18th tee with a three-shot lead, Van de Velde's journey to the green became the stuff of nightmares. And in the process, it brought telling emphasis to the strange behaviour of the human mind when subjected to serious stress. Effectively, the Frenchman made a series of poor decisions.

After being extremely fortunate to escape the Burn from a blocked drive, he lacked the prudence to do the safe thing. Ideally, from a position within the coils of the Burn, over on the neighbouring 17th, he should have knocked a short iron back to the fairway and settled for a bogey.

Instead, needing a shot of 176 yards to clear the hazard, he went for a grand finale, aiming for the clock on the hotel wall, behind the green. But the shot was blocked and through a series of almost comic bounces, hit the front of the grandstand, was deflected back over the Burn and into thick rough.

Now Van de Velde had to pitch over both Burn and bunker to reach the green 30 yards away. But his arms failed to deliver the necessary power to the sandwedge and the ball popped into the water.

In the misguided belief that he could play the submerged ball out of the water, the Frenchman sat down on the edge of the hazard and proceeded to take off his shoes and socks. His wife, Brigitte, hardly knew how to react, seeming to break into slightly hysterical laughter.

Down he went into the water while observers looked pityingly at his plight. Would he try to play it with disastrous results, or would sanity prevail in the shape of a penalty drop? Perhaps it was the coldness of the stream covering up to his ankles which restored some semblance of focus to his addled brain.

The drop was made, the Burn was safely traversed, but the ball failed to carry all the way to the green. Rather did it come to rest in the sand where his playing partner, Craig Parry, had already landed. How much more drama could the situation possibly produce? Parry stepped into the trap and duly holed the bunker shot for a closing birdie that might have been worth millions to the Frenchman.

Van de Velde played out - a fine recovery which sent the ball six feet past the target. With remarkable bravery he eased the ball towards the left half of the cup; it turned as he hoped and found the target.