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WHAT a nice feeling to come back from Portugal with a big cheque in my back pocket!

I had a feeling David would play well there because on the range he was hitting the ball as well as I have seen.

My mates had watched the odds on David having a good result go up and up every week and they asked me to call them when I thought he was due a good result.

I didn't tell them about it because I didn't want to count my chickens. I bet they are all mad with me now.

I was a little bit disappointed not to win in the end, but after a good night's sleep I realised I should be over the moon.

After about the ninth hole on the final day David asked me to stop him from looking at the leaderboard. That's very unusual for a golfer but I wasn't going to argue.

We bumped into the Sky Sports commentator Richard Boxall a couple of holes from home and he whispered to me that we were just one shot off the lead, so I grinned at him.

Deep down I think David knew he was doing well, but he just wanted to focus on making as many birdies as possible. On the last hole he turned to me and asked how are we doing?' I said do you really want to know?' and he said no, not really', so we started talking about something else!

We actually got a bit lucky on the last.

David pulled his two iron to the left of the green, but it hit a pole which was about an inch wide and bounced onto the fairway.

When something like that happens you start to think it is going to be your day.

When David holed his final putt the first thing he did was turn around and look at the leaderboard.

He honestly had no idea what was going on.

Going into the play-off David was very confident.

I had only been involved in one before, in South Africa when I was on the bag of Anders Hansen, and we lost that one.

Our tactic was to be aggressive and it worked as Alastair Forsyth was eliminated.

Going down 17 I thought we were in good shape when Bourdy pulled his tee shot, but he hit a good recovery and then David pulled his iron shot.

It was a difficult up and down from behind the green and unfortunately David couldn't make par. The rest as they say, is history.

To be fair to Bourdy he held his nerve and he deserved to win.

Afterwards I was mentally shattered but so pleased that David finally found some form.

Roll on the China Open next week.

9:00am Wednesday 9th April 2008

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