The other was Floyd Landis, who received a message of congratulations from George Bush.

Golf has been taking a few hits lately. Mostly because of a perception that the Ryder Cup has been hijacked by filthy lucre, and mostly because the event has been pawned off to a rich man's country club rather than staged on one of the country's traditional links courses.

But then if the Ryder Cup had gone to Portmarnock, with its ridiculous men-only membership policy, the whining would have been just as loud.

It is difficult to defend the hype surrounding the Ryder Cup which will soon rise to an almost insufferable level, and it is also difficult to buy into the notion of Team Europe, but what do the detractors want here?

Do they want a bunch of guys with sideburns, PVC bags and polyester shirts to turn up for a friendly knockabout? Do they want to take the Ryder Cup back to a time when it made a sidebar in print and the third or fourth item in TV and radio bulletins? Flasks of tea and hang sandwiches mightn't go down too well at the K Club, but Ireland's rugby captain is a millionaire and our best GAA players are looking for cash in return for commitment, so welcome to 2006.

The Ryder Cup has probably got too big for its boots when the Railway Cup, the Munster Senior Cup and golf 's own Irish Open have all seen their stock plummet. But that doesn't mean there's any more nobility in some local stalwart swinging over the winning point for his parish than in Paul McGinley rolling in a putt to beat the Americans.

Golf unashamedly has its snout in the corporate trough, but then the last time anyone looked, it wasn't as if Gaelic games, soccer, rugby or racing had turned their backs on the pin-striped dollar. And as for those elusive Ryder Cup tickets, try getting a seat at an All Ireland final, a Six Nations game or a European Championship qualifier if you're out of the loop.

It could be that the anti-golf lobby would prefer to hold a candle for the systematic cheating which ruined the recent soccer World Cup, or for the ugly seam of violence which undermines the GAA. It could be that they have no time for a sport whose elite practitioners would call a penalty on themselves first rather than bend the rules, or it could be that they would want Wayne Rooney rather than Ernie Els as a role model for their kids.

Last Sunday, Floyd Landis was pictured with a glass of champagne as he neared the finish line of the Tour de France on the Champs Elysees. The image was altogether more glamorous than that of Tiger Woods as he held the Claret Jug against the backdrop of a flat, burnt, north of England landscape.

Yet Landis's sport is riven by denial, delusion and dishonesty. An athletic charade stripped of its credibility, fuelled by drugs and lies. No one emerged from the crowd pleading, "Say it ain't so Floyd, " because now, everyone has elite cycling's tawdry number.

There was denial, delusion and dishonesty too at Hoylake. A denial by Woods that he simply upped the pace in the final round whenever anyone threatened to draw level. A deluded Sergio Garcia who said he was "happy" after trailing in seven shots behind Woods, and as for dishonesty, some of the rents charged by house owners on the Wirral were scandalously high.

That was how low golf stooped last week.

Woods made his 11th major success look easy, and that is about the highest compliment that can be paid to anyone in sport. Hoylake is a deceptive course. Television accentuates the relatively flat fairways, and the relatively flat greens, but the view from the tee is altogether different. The player's eye sees a jumble of angles and nests of bunkers which appear to populate all the best landing areas.

What Hoylake lacks in visual appeal, it more than makes up for with a high anxiety quotient.

Woods was unquestionably helped by the fact that the ground was rock-hard, and that the wind was never much more than a gentle links breeze. When his timing has been off, the driver has proven to be the most destructive club in his bag, so once he realised that his two iron was running 290 yards, the decision was made for him.

What followed was a masterclass of ballstriking, an exhibition of high fades, low draws and stingers which might have been unspectacular in that the ball invariably ended up in the middle of the green, but which was still sublime in its relentless authority. "He only missed three shots all week, " said Woods's caddie, Steve Williams.

With the driver decommissioned with the exception of one hole during the first round, Woods led the field in driving accuracy, and was second in greens in regulation. He wound up in three bunkers, but crucially never visited one of the punishing fairway bunkers, he stumbled slightly with three three-putts on the Saturday, however, he was a combined total of 14 under par for the par fives.

If his strategy of deftly avoiding trouble rather than attacking the course paid such dividends, it was significant that no other player chose the same cautious route. Given that the gameplan at most tournaments in America and Europe is to drive the ball as far as possible and then no matter where it lands, to be faced with just a short iron to the green, the British Open can come as a shock to the system.

By taking the driver out of the equation, Woods knew he would have to hit numerous three and four irons into Hoylake's greens. In the modern game, with its drive-and-a-flick template, the long iron is a high-tariff shot, and while the world number one delivered a demonstration of the art, no one else in the field had the self-belief to play the course that way.

"At times, I didn't think it was the right plan because he's so long off the tee he could've very short irons into some of the holes, " said Els who never challenged in the final round and finished five shots back. "But he stuck to his plan and it really worked out for him. He knows how to win these things."

Woods's performance was as impressively clinical as Nick Faldo at St Andrews in 1990, but he won with more feeling. If the swooshification of golf 's icon continues to grate . . .

the most recent Nike ad before Earl Woods's death, with images of father and son through the years, was at best shamelessly sentimental and at worst exploitative . . . it is unlikely that his tears at the 18th green will be used to ratchet up another of his main sponsor's promos.

For all Woods's availability to the media during tournaments, and for all the thousands of neutral words he rolls off the tongue season after season, he has never been, and probably never will be, a confessional golfer in the way that Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer, Gary Player, Tom Watson and Greg Norman were before him.

If we know him almost exclusively by his deeds, last Sunday's aftermath made him more human. On the outside, there was the sense that the win came easy, but the outpouring of emotion vouched for the concentration, the application and the determination that had gone into the effort to prove his US Open critics wrong, and to win another major for his father.

There was an honesty and a dignity about Woods in victory. Golf has a gatekeeper it can be proud of.