O'Hern is ready to take the next step

Well, it's finally been confirmed that Bernhard Langer is not going to offer himself as captain of the Europe Ryder Cup team for next year's match in Ireland, but whoever succeeds him could have been forgiven if he had cast a slightly wistful look in the direction of at least one of the combatants in the playoff for the Heineken Open title at Royal Melbourne on Sunday.

True, Craig Parry, the little powerhouse of an Aussie, won the title at the fourth hole of a sudden-death playoff, but it was the man he beat who would have prompted a few "if only" musings from the as-yet unnamed Ryder Cup supremo.

If it is true that consistency is one of the enduring ingredients of what goes to make up the ideal player in the grand old match, Nick O'Hern is one of the supreme exemplars of the species.

Last year O'Hern strung together a series of performances almost from the first tee box of the season in the early spring to the final green in the autumn.

Eleven times he finished in the top 10; in 23 appearances on the European Tour he did not miss a single cut. That's pretty amazing, by anybody's standards. Even the best of the best misses a cut sometimes.

The result was that the slim young fellow from Perth on Australia's balmy west coast finished 12th in the order of merit with getting on for the equivalent of $700,000 in prize money. You tend to rake in a decent slice of the available swag if you play in 92 rounds out of 92 available to you.

At 33, O'Hern might be the third-best left-hander in the world after Phil Mickelson and Mike Weir. If asked to comment on that suggestion, he might stammer something modest and change the subject, for he is a modest sort of chap not giving to blowing his own brass musical instrument.

Nick O'Hern lost to Craig Parry in a playoff at the Heineken Classic. (Getty Images)

He shouldn't be so self-effacing, because of global golf's southpaws he is right up there with the best of them. He probably knows it, too, but he's much too nice a guy to go around the place shooting his mouth off about his own talents.

Perhaps he should do so a little more, but it doesn't stop him being regarded with the greatest possible respect by his fellow players. Golf is a notoriously hard school sporting endeavour in which to succeed and, furthermore, receive the approval of one's peer group. Well, O'Hern has that in spades -- and clubs, too, for that matter.

He is one of those admirable but also slightly annoying types who is good at just about anything he tries. When he was younger he played for Western Australia at baseball to follow in the footsteps of his father, who was a full Australian international at the game.

He was also a very good tennis player who was considered good enough to have made a decent professional career out of the sport. That he ultimately chose golf was due in no small part, again, to his good old dad, who played off a 3 handicap.

O'Hern Sr introduced his boy Nick to the game when the kid was nine and, bless his heart, made no attempt to change which side of the ball his offspring stood on. OK, so the convention was to address it from the left, but when the boy stood to the starboard side of the missile, he was not persuaded to do otherwise.

If there is one small blot on the O'Hern career profile, it is that he has plied his trade on the European circuit every season since winning his card in the q-school at the first attempt in 1998 and has yet to win.

He was second twice in 2003 and repeated the feat again last year, when he also finished in third, fourth, fifth and sixth places during a season of utter reliability. He recognizes that he needs to stretch his stride in the last furlong sometime soon and canter into the winner's circle but is not letting it get him down.

He has no need to. He will win and, without ever crossing the line that changes praiseworthy confidence into damaging cockiness, he must realize it.

The rest of us do, players, officials, fans and the scribbling classes. He has learnt his trade well this last half-dozen years and victory would just be the last, rubber-stamping exercise in an upwardly mobile career profile.

It won't be long in the coming. If only he were European, that's all.

PS: He also speaks fluent Japanese. Don't some people just make you sick?

Editor's note: Mel Webb covers the international golf scene. Look for his columns each week on GolfWeb and PGATOUR.com.