Long before he qualified for the 2004 team, Paul McGinley made it clear he regarded winning a second Ryder Cup cap as an honour that gives a player a status significantly above those who make just a single appearance in the biennial match.
By the same reasoning, Paul Sheehan can consider himself a cut above the eight other former Golf Masters champions and he operates on a level barely imaginable for the 100,000-plus managers yet to taste overall success in the 10-year existence of our tour.
When he first triumphed back in 1998, Sheehan was so grateful to Bob Estes for securing a decisive 11th-place finish in the season-ending Texas Open that he tracked him down in the LaCantera clubhouse to thank him personally.
Last Sunday morning, as Graeme McDowell blazed through the field at the BMW International, Sheehan could have been forgiven for driving to Portrush to greet the Ulster man on his return home.
Sheehan was aware third-placed Mike O'Brien had McGinley in his Diarmuid Reddan 1 selection and he assumed, not unreasonably, that O'Brien had stuck with his original idea of replacing the idle Chad Campbell with Paul Casey. Effectively this meant Sheehan had McDowell and Stephen Gallacher defending a 56,301 advantage over O'Brien's McGinley and Marten Olander.
The way the leaderboard looked after three rounds in Munich, that advantage was down to under 20,000 and Sheehan was, in his own words, "sweating bullets".
Sunday mornings should be about leisurely breakfasts, reading the papers or playing with the kids but how could Sheehan relax as teletext showed McDowell covering the first 11 holes in 8 under par?
In fact he could have left the remote control aside if not quite out of reach as O'Brien had a last-minute change of heart and used his final transfer to bring in Sergio Garcia rather than Casey.
The Spaniard was far enough down the Munich standings to take the heat off Sheehan but his eventual tied-25th finish helped O'Brien up to second place in a desperately close battle for the minor placings.
Just 57,467 separated the teams ranked second to sixth with Thomas Levet's 80,000 for second in Munich the crucial factor that lifted Peter Lynch to third place.
The Fredrik Jacobson of the Golf Masters tour is Kevin Barry, who was in the top three for 11 of the last 12 weeks but was all out of transfers and all out of luck as he fell to fourth in the final reckoning.
For the record, Sheehan wins a trip for four to the Ryder Cup with various trimmings including 1,000 spending money and a €1,000 voucher for golf gear.
O'Brien gets a golf holiday for two in Myrtle Beach with similar goodies and Lynch and a friend will be taking their new gear and stuffed wallets for a couple of rounds at Gleneagles.
When we pluck up enough courage we'll phone Kevin Barry to find out what size Cutter & Buck shirt he would like as consolation.
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