The opening tee shot in a round of golf is always important, and there's never been a more accurate blow off the first tee than the one struck, so legend has it, by Christy O'Connor Sr many decades ago. "Himself", as the great man is known in Ireland, arrived late for a tournament nursing a vicious hangover, and after instructing his caddie to fill a flask with black coffee and brandy and wait for him under a shady tree 70 yards left of the first fairway, O'Connor hooked his drive to within two feet of his desperately needed pick-me-up.
Only Christy and his caddie knew how good a shot that was but the game has changed since O'Connor's era, and Tiger Woods is largely responsible. Known for his strict fitness regime, Woods is also the rarest of visitors to golf's 19th hole and with most modern professionals religiously following his example, it probably explains why so many of them look so miserable.
However, there are exceptions, and it would be difficult to come across a cheerier professional golfer than England's Simon Dyson, despite the fact that the 31-year-old Yorkshireman has been following the Woods health and fitness ethic so seriously that he has also eliminated caffeine, as well as alcohol, from his lifestyle.
It's obviously working for him, which is bad news for those of us looking to shave a few strokes off our handicaps without having to resort to a daily routine of pumping iron and drinking milk shakes. A couple of weeks after Dyson got ultra-serious about looking after his body, he won the Dutch Open in August, following it up with victory in the Alfred Dunhill Cup last month, and is ranked 47th in the world and at the top of the list of the automatic qualifiers for next year's European Ryder Cup team.
"Tiger is a role model for many of us and you'd be hard-pressed to find a pro who touches alcohol at all any more," says Dyson. "I spent many years on tour not really looking after myself, but now, while I might have a beer on my birthday, I won't touch a drop in the two weeks before a tournament, including Christmas Day. It's all to do with giving yourself the best chance to win."
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Dyson has also followed Woods's no caffeine example after the world No 1 claimed it was affecting his putting, since when the Englishman has been holing out from everywhere. "Those four and five-footers used to be my Achilles' heel but now I feel like I can't miss," says Dyson. "I feel better, my head's clearer and my results suggest that cutting out caffeine - I won't even have a Coke any more - has worked for me."
Dyson made his lifestyle alterations after his coach, Pete Cowan, made him aware of the fine margins between being an accomplished player and somebody capable of winning a major, such as Retief Goosen. "Pete said to me that my stroke average for 2007 and 2008 was 71.16, and I replied, 'That's pretty good, isn't it?' Then he said, 'Yes, it's almost as good as Goosen's, whose average is 70.7. But you're 58th in the Order of Merit and he's fifth. Just half a shot a round. That was how close I was to being right up there. Just a missed putt here and there, or an up and down. My all-round game is about the same but this year I'm making those putts, or getting up and down from tricky spots. That's really the only difference."
A pro for 10 years, Dyson won three times before the Dunhill triumph but victory in one of the Tour's richest events has significantly raised his profile, placing him firmly in the bracket of up and coming British golfers, along with the likes of Rory McIlroy, Ross Fisher, Oliver Fisher and Chris Wood, all of whom are likely to face the Americans at Celtic Manor next September.
"The Ryder Cup is obviously a massive goal of mine," says Dyson. "As someone who has always been a bubbly, positive sort of guy, I think team golf really suits my character. Sure, I can have a little swear to myself when I've mucked up a hole, but I never take it with me to the next tee, and I'd like to think that my look-on-the-bright-side attitude can help lift a partner."
Dyson has had plenty of success in team events, in the Walker Cup at Nairn in 1999 and this year's Seve/Vivendi Trophy in Paris, but the Ryder Cup is something else again, so how does he think he'll cope with the pressure if he makes Colin Montgomerie's 12-man team for Celtic Manor? "I honestly don't think it will affect me too much," he says. "I can't say for sure, because when I speak to guys who have played three or four Ryder Cups they say they can't stop shaking when they get on to that first tee, and when you see someone like Woods hit the first shot of the tournament into the water, as he did at the K Club, then it's got to be nerves. But I have so many friends on tour and I'm never more relaxed than when I'm playing with my mates, so when they say there's added pressure when you're playing for a team, I think you can reverse that and just go out and enjoy it even more, even in something as big as the Ryder Cup.
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"Playing with a mate makes things easier, if anything, and there's no feeling of blame, or feeling down, when one of you hits a bad shot. From what I hear, they don't have the same kind of friendships in America that we do in Europe, and we all know what happened when [Phil] Mickelson and Woods, who are not really good friends at all, got paired together [they lost both of their games]."
Dyson believes it was camaraderie that gave Great Britain & Ireland the edge over Europe in the Vivendi Trophy. "All the different nationalities on our tour mix well, and I've some great pals outside of the Brits as well. But the fact is that the Europeans are all slightly different. The Swedes like to have dinner at six, and the Spaniards at nine, so when it came to the Seve Trophy there was less of a togetherness even for something like that. All the Brits ate together at the same time, and we also decided that our week in Paris would be without wives and girlfriends, unlike the Europeans, who paired off with their partners and went their separate ways at the end of the day."
The only time Dyson doesn't seem to enjoy his golf quite so much is in a pro-am. "That has nothing to do with playing with amateurs," he says. "It's just that it takes six hours or more to get round, which is nonsense. I'm not very good at spotting flaws in swings either, so I can't help out when an amateur is off his game. David Howell is another player who's not much of a coach but he has a joky way of getting round it when someone asks him, 'What am I doing wrong?' 'Your clubs are too long,' he says. 'You need to shave about six inches off them because then they'll ll fit in the bin'."
Dyson chuckles. He is rarely not chuckling. "Don't get me wrong. There are times when all of us think, 'This bloody game'. But then you sit down at night and say to yourself, 'Hey, hang on a minute'. You can forget just how fortunate you are."