World No 29

Walking off the 16th green on nine under par at this year's Open Championship, Andrés Romero's name was being lightly pencilled on to the Claret Jug. Two holes and three dropped strokes later and the 26-year-old Argentinian was still smiling despite missing out on an unexpected double for his homeland after Ángel Cabrera's US Open victory.

Romero who had signed for a card that had only four pars on it, the last of which had been on the 7th hole, had just missed perhaps his best chance at a major and given golf folklore his own Jean Van de Velde moment on the 17th. An errant tee-shot found heavy rough and while his ball looked to be lying poorly, he tried to chase a two-iron on to the green the remaining 200 yards.

The club snagged in the rough and the ball slammed into the wall of the Barry Burn, bounced across the fairway before going out of bounds. Romero had to take a drop and then hit a three-wood on to the middle of the green, where two putts left him with a six.

For anybody outside the game, Romero's was not an instantly recognisable name. Yet in many ways the Argentinian, who had to give up a promising sideline in unicycling after one too may falls, had been on the verge of such a display. In his first season on the European Tour, in 2006, he upstaged the big names in the field to finish second at the Open's traditional curtain-raiser at Loch Lomond. Buoyed by that performance, he carried his form to Royal Hoylake a week later, when he again featured high on the leaderboard before finishing eighth.

Perhaps harking back to his days on one wheel, the momentum he gained from his third place at Carnoustie this season stayed with him and he redressed the balance the next week to win his first European Tour victory at the Players' Championship in Hamburg, Germany, a win that rocketed him into the world's top 30 for the first time.

Factfile

Age: 26 Nationality: Argentinian Wins: 2 Major wins: 0 Major record in 2007: Masters: did not compete; US Open: did not compete; Open: third; US PGA: missed cut How he qualified for World Match Play: Thirteenth on Major Championship ranking Previous WMP experience: None