Ian Woosnam was supposed to spend last year revelling in his Ryder Cup triumph but ended up spending most of it in bed. When he should have been taking his lap of honour around a variety of European Tour venues, he was so afflicted by postviral fatigue syndrome that he could barely drag himself down the stairs, never mind walk 18 holes.

The man who led Europe to victory at the K Club in 2006 hasn’t appeared in a tournament since he withdrew from the Irish Open last May. It is almost a year since he played two competitive rounds. No wonder the Welshman, who turns 50 next weekend, is looking forward to next week’s DGM Barbados Open, where he expects to be fit enough for his long-awaited debut on the seniors circuit.

Woosnam’s illness, more commonly known as ME, affects about 250,000 people in Britain but has only recently been recognised as a genuine medical condition. Often triggered by a viral infection, its symptoms include aching muscles and poor concentration, but mainly chronic fatigue. “It hit me like a stone,” he recalls. “I wasn’t as bad as some, who can end up in a wheelchair, but for a good 12 months, I didn’t feel well at all. You just want to lie down all the time. I was laid up in bed, absolutely shattered. All you can do is rest, which is something I’m no good at.

“It’s about being patient, and I’m not that kind of person. I’m too fidgety. I want to do things. But you can’t fight it. If you try to, it knocks you back, and you have to start again. I was expecting it to go away much quicker than it did.”

Health has never been Woosnam’s strong suit. The stress of playing in the Ryder Cup used to bring him out in cold sores, and in 1987 he was diagnosed with ankylosing spondylitis, a rheumatic disease affecting the spine.

Just when he seemed to be handling that with the help of weekly injections, along came this latest malaise. “Maybe I have overdone it,” he says. “I have put my body through quite a lot down the years. The stress of everything, the Ryder Cup perhaps, then you get a virus, and it tips you over the edge. For it to happen so soon after our win at the K Club was especially disappointing. I didn’t have the chance to enjoy it really.”

After he was over the worst, Woosnam was able to play golf twice a week, albeit only with the aid of a buggy. Now he is walking again, “90% there”, and ready to take his bow on the European Seniors Tour. He is the last of the so-called Famous Five to reach his half-century. Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Bernhard Langer and Sandy Lyle – who combined to dominate golf in the 1980s – have all turned 50 in the past 11 months, but only Langer is rolling back the years. “It would have been fantastic if we could all have competed against each other again, but Seve has retired, and Nick has his TV work. Together, we could have taken the seniors game to another level.”

Woosnam already spends much of his time in Barbados, which makes Royal Westmore-land the ideal venue at which to enter a new era. After that, he will take to the Champions Tour in America, where he plans to play 15 of his 22 events this year. The former Masters winner, who was world No 1 for a total of 50 weeks, relishes the chance to start again on a circuit that last season saw its biggest-money winner pocket more than $2.5m.

“It’s like a pension really, but the main thing is to enjoy myself because I haven’t done that in the past few years,” he says. “It’s hard work competing against the youngsters these days. They don’t shape the ball any more. You don’t see them hitting fades and draws. They just aim straight and wallop it as hard as they can. It’s all about power.

“You don’t want to wish your life away, but I have been looking forward to this for five years. It would be nice to feel like I can win again. I don’t know when I last had that feeling. If you don’t feel you can compete, what is the point?”

Woosnam will have his work cut out, with the likes of Langer, Scott Hoch and Fred Funk capable of winning on the PGA Tour, never mind its senior equivalent. Funk’s winning total at the Mastercard Championship in January was 21 under par, and that was over only three rounds. “These guys can play,” says Woosnam. “You can’t just turn up and expect to win.”

But, as challenges go, it doesn’t exactly compare with captaining Europe in the Ryder Cup. Woosnam warns that this year could be more difficult than ever, and not just because a defeat is inevitable sooner or later. The American captain, Paul Azinger, has increased to four the number of wild cards at his disposal, put back their selection date and instigated a change to the qualifying system so that more form players will make his team. “I don’t know why it has taken them so long,” says Woosnam.

And, of course, there is the rigorous scrutiny to which every captain is subjected. As Faldo braces himself for the build-up to this year’s match at Valhalla, his predecessor knows only too well the criticism that comes with it. Pilloried before he had so much as picked a pairing in 2006, there is no disguising Woosnam’s lingering resentment of those who doubted him.

In Barbados next weekend, he will mark his 50th birthday by heading out in a boat with his closest friends, but there will be no song and dance in the newspapers. “When I think of everything I have read, it would be easier for me to speak to nobody,” he says. “All that stuff about how I was going to be a crap captain, how I was going about it the wrong way. It was a class thing. Just because I’m not good with words, a lot of people presumed I wasn’t doing anything, but I was.

“And if Paul McGinley hadn’t given them that putt [to half his match rather than win it], we would have beaten them by a record score. It made a lot of people look silly, which gave me a lot of pleasure. It shows you don’t need a silver spoon in your mouth to do it right. At the end of the day, it’s about getting the job done and placing the right people around you. I can look back and say, ‘Job done. Eat that’.”

The men he proved wrong

‘Woosnam should have told Lee Westwood he was in the [2006 Ryder Cup] team before making it public . . . his decision to pick Darren Clarke is a massive gamble’ – Bernard Gallacher, former Ryder Cup captain

‘My relationship with Woosnam is dead and will remain so in future. I haven’t heard a word from him in six months. His captaincy is the most pathetic I have ever seen in my life. He has put a lot of players through a lot of misery simply because he is incapable of doing the right thing’ – Thomas Bjorn, overlooked for a wild card. The Dane later apologised, but was fined £10,000 by the European Tour