This is the stuff of films. How could Hollywood not be interested in the story of Drew Weaver: a young, clean-cut, American golfer who narrowly escapes a madman’s gun on his university campus in the spring, and two months later travels to the Amateur Championship across the Atlantic on a wing and a prayer?

Despite never having been to Britain or having played on a links course, he battles through two qualifying rounds of strokeplay and seven rounds of matchplay to win 2 and 1 against Tim Stewart, of Australia. Standing outside the sturdy brick clubhouse at Royal Lytham & St Annes that has seen so much of golf’s history, he said: “I dedicate this win to the disaster at Virginia Tech [in which 32 people died]. Winning the Amateur is minute compared to what happened two months ago.”

In truth, this was a final in which romance overshadowed skill. Weaver, with six birdies in 12 holes after lunch, outplayed Stewart to such an extent that he was six up with six holes to go. Of course, an occasion such as this could not end without a little more drama, and it came when Stewart won the next four holes.

So they went to the 17th, the scene of Bobby Jones’s remarkable stroke in the 1926 Open. Stewart got his four. Indeed, he nearly got a birdie but Weaver was left with a putt of seven feet to halve the hole and win the match. “Focus on the putt,” he said to himself. “Forget what it means.” And then he holed it.

Selection for the US Walker Cup team at Royal County Down in September was miles off, but now Weaver is firmly in contention. It would be too Hollywood for him to be picked and then to hole the winning putt, wouldn’t it? Or would it?

— John Hopkins has been named Welsh Sports Writer of the Year for 2006.