SHAUN MICHEEL will be hoping that his second visit to the World Match Play is a bit happier than his first, in 2003. The American’s rented house on the Wentworth estate was broken into the night before his first match and burglars took about £1,400 and his credit cards. The police were called at 3am, with Micheel due to tee off against Vijay Singh six hours later. In the circumstances Micheel did well to take the Fijian to a second extra hole before losing.
Yet it was Micheel’s seven-iron shot to within two inches of the 72nd hole at Oak Hill a month earlier that sewed up perhaps the biggest theft of his life. His tap-in putt to win the US PGA gave the then world No 169 his first tour title. As a mark of how unheralded Micheel was, he finished that season a major winner but in only 32nd place on the US money list.
It looked as if he had slipped back into obscurity after that until his run of seven consecutive missed cuts in major championships came to a spectacular end last month at the Medinah Country Club when he came second in the US PGA to Tiger Woods. Perhaps even more heroic than his major victory, however, was when he saved two people from drowning during a tournament in North Carolina on his first year on tour, which led to him being honoured with a Sons of Confederate Veterans Award for Bravery.
Micheel is a romantic soul. After winning the PGA one of his first acts was to kiss his pregnant wife, Stephanie, on the tummy. He said that what had got him through the tournament was thinking constantly about her and trying to find her in the crowd. Three months later, Stephanie gave birth to a son, Dade. Naturally he was given a golfing middle name — Palmer.
FACT FILE
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Age: 37
Nationality: American
Wins: 3
Major wins: 1 (US PGA, 2003)
Major record in 2006: Masters: missed cut; US Open: missed cut; Open: missed cut; US PGA: second
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World ranking: 83
How he qualified for World Match Play: Seventh on the Major Championship ranking
Previous WMP experience: One appearance in 2003