Stewart loses the choker tag

Rarely has winning a major championship meant more to a golfer than coming out on top in the US Open again means to Payne Stewart right now.

At the age of 42, with a heart condition and with the additional burden of a problem called Attention Deficit Disorder, Stewart could not be sure how many more chances he would have.

So to triumph at Pinehurst - and to do it the way he did against the players he did - guaranteed that he will now be remembered for more than just his funny clothes.

Stewart, who blew a four-stroke lead on the final day in San Francisco last year, sank closing putts of 20, five and 18 feet to edge out Phil Mickelson by one, with Tiger Woods and Vijay Singh a stroke further back in joint third.

He was the only player to break par over four days in one of the best US Opens in living memory, and the finish he produced buried for good the "choker" tag which had followed his career even after his victories in the 1989 US PGA and 1991 US Open.

Now this most patriotic of men is back in America's Ryder Cup side after the bitter disappointments of missing out on the last two matches.

"The Ryder Cup is on the wrong side of the ocean, and hopefully I can do something about," he said.

"I felt I was a legitimate (wild card) selection for 1995 and 1997. But I wasn't picked and I couldn't rely on Ben Crenshaw picking me this time.

"So I knew I had to get on the team, and that has been a driving force for me this season.

"I've achieved two goals with this win - another major and another Ryder Cup.

"I think I bring enthusiasm to the team. I have a lot of energy and I'm tired of us getting beat. The only way I could make a difference was to get on the team."

Stewart admits he cries when he hears the Star Spangled Banner anthem, but it was for a different reason that he cried only a few hours before the final round in North Carolina.

"I put the television on, and in a preview of the golf there was some film with me and my father. My wife wasn't in the room, and I just bawled."

Stewart senior played in the 1955 US Open but died in 1985 from cancer.

"Seeing him again gave me strength. I never gave up because he never gave up. The last time I saw him alive I was able to tell him I was going to become a father, and although he was really sick by then he was able to make me laugh.

"Don't buy expensive baby furniture," he told me.

"It just wears out."

Now Stewart can buy what he wants. The winner's cheque was for nearly £400,000, but since he already had nearly 10million US dollars in career earnings that was the last thing on his mind.

That is not to say things stay on his mind for very long any way.

Four years ago, during a dip in his fortunes when he slumped from sixth to 123rd on the US Tour money list, he was diagnosed as suffering from Attention Deficit Disorder.

"I can't stay focused on things. I get distracted easily and allow my mind to wander when I need to be focused. Just being aware of it helps."

It did not appear a problem at Pinehurst.

The heart condition was discovered in 1993.

"I've an enlarged heart and what they call a left-side ventricular block.

"It's monitored now, and I take a high blood pressure pill for it."

Stewart has also had to cope with the discovery that his mother was an alcoholic.

"She wouldn't be alive if my sisters and I hadn't intervened. She's been sober for eight or nine years now. But we had a big family discussion about it not long ago, and I pointed out that we all have the same genes and are all susceptible to becoming alcoholics.

"I'm aware of it and I catch myself when I drink too much at times."

He allowed himself a celebration, though, on his return home to Orlando - a home which Michael Jackson viewed as a prospective buyer recently without realising who Payne Stewart was until told he was "that golfer with the colourful knickers".

Mickelson, meanwhile, returned to Arizona to await the birth of his first child.

Throughout the US Open he was on alert to quit at any time and would have done so even if he was in a play-off today.

That didn't happen because of missed seven-foot putts at the 16th and 17th and a missed 25-footer on the last.

Those holes, though, deserve to be remembered for what Stewart did rather than what Mickelson did not - or what Woods did and did not.

The world number two produced an incredible birdie three at the 489-yard par-four 16th to revive his hopes but then missed from four feet on the next.

Woods, annoyed about the need for a slow play warning earlier in the round, also finished third in the Open at Birkdale last year.

But, however optimistic he feels about Carnoustie in three weeks' time, Stewart - twice a runner-up at the Open - can match him.

Part of the thanks for that go to his wife Tracey. She had spotted on Saturday that he was moving his head as he putted. He worked on it and never has he putted better.