Still retaining all the hunger of a rookie

Interview with Philip Walton: Keith Duggan talks to a player who experienced the high of winning a Ryder Cup but now is struggling to retain his tour card

You could call Philip Walton one of golf's disappeared. For all its cosiness and crusty etiquette, no sport is more callous or brutal when it comes to the exposure of non-performance than what Peter Allis likes to describe as "this silly old stick-and-ball game". One of the guilty thrills for the hundreds of thousands of merely mortal golfers - from the hackers to the exceptionally good - comes from watching the disintegration of one of the handful of elite players.

The most recent casualty has been David Duval, whose plummet from the apex of professional golf to a ranking in the low hundreds was terrible, fascinating and beyond comprehension. It is as if the golfer wakes up one morning not quite stripped of his game but simply unable to make it evident, as if it is rattling about inside him, like a coin trapped in a piggy bank.

The knowledge that it is still within can make golf a curse and the more exasperated he becomes, the more certain he feels he can succeed. The more he wants to simply put a string of decent holes together, the swifter he can fall. That has been Philip Walton's experience. A decade has now passed since the likeable Dubliner calmly dropped the putt that won the Ryder Cup for Europe in the sultry environs of Oak Hill.

It is safe to say in that minute he was the epicentre of world sport, with the golfing fraternity of two continents riveted to his every move. Walton was not a stereotypical member of golf's A class, never as sunny as big Greg Norman or as expensive looking as Seve Ballesteros, but he moved easily in those circles, regarded as a tough and talented member of the professional tour.

In the arbitrary manner of the Ryder Cup, relatively straightforward games can come to assume definitive importance over an afternoon. And so as he prepared for his final hole in his game against Jay Haas, Walton was aware the destination of the trophy was dependent on the outcome.

"He (Haas) sky-pull-hooked his tee-shot and I kind of squirted mine down the right side of the fairway and into some rough," he remembered last week, reliving that hole for neither the first nor the last time in his life. "And then he took something like seven or eight minutes to hit his next shot. I remember Gallacher (Bernard, the European captain) coming over to me and telling me to relax and I just said I was all right. I was no more than 40 yards from Haas when he finally played his shot and I knew straight away there was no way that ball was going to make it. I think he played a sand wedge.

"I just missed the green with a five wood - the ball had a nice lie, with a clump of grass at the front and very little at the back. He played up and then went six feet past the hole with his first putt. That was my chance. But I don't think I really understood how big the whole thing was at that minute.

"I suppose you spend your whole life working and practising so that if you do find yourself in a situation like that, you will be able to stand up for it. It was only afterwards that I was able to absorb what it meant to people. I just made the putt and then Gallacher came racing out to me followed by half of Europe. You should have seen the state of the green afterwards. Then there was a big commotion. Yer man Joe Hanson poured a bottle of champagne or a pint of beer right down on my head. Soaked me. I wanted to get out of there then. All that wasn't my scene. But I mean, it is some memory to have."

Drinking a Coca-Cola, Walton's strawberry features are flushed from a morning round at the Ring of Kerry Golf Club pro-am, played in tropical conditions. Walton posted the best score of the day in a field that included Eamonn Darcy and he shakes his head in mock disbelief at the fact that his shining golfing achievement is a decade old. He is still regularly introduced as "Ryder Cup hero Philip Walton" and in the way of these things, that moment in sport seemed to resonate more deeply with more people than others do: he is remembered and admired for it.

"It is amazing that 10 years have passed," he admits. "But I don't know, maybe I have been living the last few years in a blur as far as golf is concerned."

As things stand, Walton has six tournaments from which to put together a winning performance or he will almost certainly have his Tour card revoked and once again return to the lonely savagery of qualifying school in northern Spain this winter. Four days of whispered desperation where old pros on a rotten streak and callow talents desperate for a sniff of the good life play with the disposition of gladiators for the right to the 35 Tour cards on offer. Although it is a stark position for Walton, he is far from pessimistic about it.

"It has been a tough year for me. I have made only two cuts. And it is mainly down to confidence. I can't explain it. The game still feels good but it doesn't come together. But in the last couple of weeks, I feel like I have broken through the barrier. I won a pro-am in Cork, played well in Switzerland and I really enjoyed the round here this morning. That's a tough, fabulous course and when you do well on it, you feel you are going the right way. But to hang on to my card, I need a win, yeah."

This week, Walton played the European Masters in Crans Montana, Switzerland, and found little solace. He was 12 over par after two rounds, a long way off the cut.

Next he has Gran Canaria, Tenerife, Madrid and Majorca. It has been a long time since he's made a cut and to win a tournament would constitute a phenomenal turnaround. But he has to believe.

When he regained his card in Spain over a year ago, he felt he was beginning to see the light but from his first tournament, in Durban, his attempts to reacclimatise to big-time golf were less than smooth. Walking in the city, he was set upon by six South Africans, astonished to find himself mugged on a sunny afternoon on a busy street. They got his phone.

"And some old stamps I had bought," he grumbled. "Not my money though. To be honest, I gave one of them an awful thump. I'd say I did a bit of damage. I felt a bit bad for the lad afterwards. But that kind of disrupted the golf for a month of so. A month later I made a cut down in Indonesia in phenomenal heat. And that has been it."

It costs Walton about 2,500 a week to compete on the European circuit. You don't need to be Eddie Hobbs to work out the financial hazards of competing at this level and not posting good scores.

"A fella once said to me that just because you think it can't get any worse doesn't mean it won't," Walton grins. "And yeah, I have been at rock bottom for so long and this year it hasn't happened. But I am only 43 years old and I have to keep fighting. Like, I want to be finished with this game by the time I am 50 and enjoy life. But I feel I have something in me still."

There are demoralising moments. Walton's son Reece, 12 now, has seen his father's Ryder Cup moment only on video and sometimes tells him he wishes he could be back there, sinking the money shot, the toast of the in-crowd. "He hates to see his dad struggling. It is hard for him to understand. And it is tough on all the kids that their father has to go and play these tournaments wherever."

And there is also the fact that all the European tournaments are ghosts from the first half of Walton's career, when he was comfortable in his game and was easy company. Since the fall from grace, there have been a few times that people he was once friendly with just found it easier to look the other way. "And that didn't impress me. I told them so."

But for the most part, it is fine. Golf is a solipsistic sport. Every man's struggles are his own. In the old days, Walton was part of an Irish dining circuit that included Christy O'Connor jr, Paul McGinley, Darcy, John McHenry, Darren Clarke and Des Smyth. And he regards all those players with great affection - although he dropped out of the dining scene when he considered the group had become too large.

"I would be coming back to the hotel when they would all be heading out to eat at eight or nine at night. It was too late. They are sound fellas. But you don't speak about someone else's game. Like, I would never have called a guy up offering advice or whatever. You just don't."

In 1998, the first year he lost his card, Walton met David Duval for the first time in a locker-room at Birkdale. The Texan leftie was spoken of then as part of golf's elite new posse epitomised by Tiger Woods. Walton was changing his shoes and Duval was pacing the floor compulsively, back and forth, back and forth, in a world of his own.

Walton said, "How's it goin?" and the American returned some vague pleasantry and retreated into his own mind again. The scene disturbed Walton and stayed with him and he followed Duval, from the cathartic high of his British Open victory in 2002 to the rapid unravelling of his game thereafter. Not long ago, asked by a young fan if he was anybody, Duval touchingly replied, "I used to be."

Walton has no definitive theory as to what caused Duval's immolation other than his desire to imitate Woods overcame him. But a stronger reason is none other than the fact golf is both ferociously tough and impossibly delicate and when you lose one tiny component part the entire machine ceases to function. It happened to Lee Westwood, who managed to return from the brink of obscurity. It even happened to Seve, who in the 1980s was a consistent challenger for the majors.

And some people on the inside find it uncomfortable to watch the guys who once came close to mastering the sport playing tournament after tournament in a fugue state, as an audience might wince to hear a concert pianist constantly hit bum notes.

All a player has is his reputation. The thing is, there are four majors a year: Ryder Cups come around every two years and the definitive players are granted a form of golfing immortality, for better or worse. Walton said he felt worse watching McGinley's winning putt in the 2002 Ryder Cup than he did himself 10 years ago.

"I don't go to them any more, I watch them on television. But my hands were sweating because you could feel the weight of that putt. I was delighted for him."

This complete absence of bitterness and self-pity are Philip Walton's strongest traits and will remain with him long after his game finally dries up. While he admits he felt embarrassed when forced to return to Tour school in 1998, that has long disappeared. He has seen the solemn desperation of the qualifying tournament chew up many fine golfers to such an extent they never returned.

Walton still has that rookie hunger even though his hip has started to ache a little after 18 holes now. When he got his card back last time round, dozens of letters reached his home in Dublin, from golf fans or people he had played with years before, all consistent in their delight.

Walton has them stored in a folder and every so often returns to them.

He wishes he could promise he will come surging back to once again compete among golf's gilded circle but he can't. He watches Tiger on satellite television like the rest of us and marvels at how golf has changed into a game of accuracy and power.

Not so long ago, he spent a morning practising putting a fade on the ball until someone told him the golf ball doesn't move like it used to. It is just designed to travel at velocity nowadays. So Walton went out and bought a new driver and he is hitting around 300 yards, as long as he has ever accomplished. Each part of his game feels good but over 18 holes, they just are not adding up. And Philip Walton cannot be fully sure they ever will again.

"All I can say is that I feel my game is on the up," he says cheerfully before walking through the clubhouse, crowded and boozy this lunchtime, with everyone in high spirits. He stands in line at the bar, leaning against a high stool. In chinos and a bright polo shirt, he looks just like every one else in the room. Except, of course, he is the only one who has won the Ryder Cup for Europe.

Yes, you could write Philip Walton off as one of golf's many tragedies, as one of her disappeared. But you would be wrong.