News: If Todd Hamilton ever lost faith in his game, he never showed it. After years of toiling on less lucrative fairways in the Far East, where he'd spent almost two decades as a tour professional, fate dealt him a different kind of hand with his maiden US Tour win in the Honda Classic in Florida on Sunday, where he held off a late charge from Davis Love III.

"Maybe it was just my time to win," remarked the 38-year-old tour "rookie". Indeed, this was just another golfing fairytale to add to last season's string of first-time major winners.

For Hamilton, though, it opens up a world of opportunity. After eight attempts to get through the US Tour's qualifying school, this win - his final-round 74 leaving him on 12-under-par 274, a shot clear of Love - gives him a two-year exemption and gets him into next week's Players Championship and next month's US Masters.

Hamilton, who started playing the Asian Tour in 1988 and contemplated quitting life as a tour professional in 1992 only to give it "one final go" when he topped the Order of Merit and got a one-year exemption on the Japanese Tour, secured a place in last year's US Tour school following a top-three position on the money list in Japan. He made the most of it, winning his tour card, and on Sunday reaped the ultimate reward for years of endeavour.

The win in the Honda earned him $900,000, almost as much as he had won in playing over 30 tournaments last season.

"Counting three world golf championship events that I played in last year, I made a little over a million dollars and that was my best year ever. And now I've made almost that in one week, so it doesn't make any sense whatsoever. A guy plays his rear end off for a year, and then a guy plays his rear end off for a week and it's almost the same amount of money. It makes no sense.

"I think the money is great," he added after his win. "Don't get me wrong, I've made a good living in Japan. I'm the type who doesn't need three or four cars, who doesn't need a 20,000-square-feet house . . . give me a decent car, a decent place to live, a set of golf clubs and I'm okay. The win is very special and the perks involved with winning down the line will be very, very gratifying."

The impact of this win will be felt quickly. Next week, he will tee up in the Players Championship - traditionally the strongest field of the year - and two weeks later will get the chance to make his debut in the Masters.

As a 17-year-old college player, he once played Augusta Country Club, which adjoins Augusta National around Amen Corner.

"I was 17 and the organisers somehow got a double-decker bus and drove us up Magnolia Lane but the course was closed. I've actually set foot on it, but never played it."

Certainly, Hamilton never suffered from any inferiority complex once he secured his card to play on the US Tour.

"The PGA Tour from top to bottom is very strong. I've always felt if you were good enough to acquire or obtain your tour card, you were good enough to win a tournament. On the Japanese Tour, we had a lot of guys that could win in Japan and maybe a handful that could win around the world.

"When I started there in 1992, if you shot 10-under every week you would probably have won five or six tournaments on a 30-week schedule but now you're lucky if you win once over there. The talent has gotten a lot better, but this (the US Tour) is the place if you want to achieve and you want to feel like you have accomplished something great."

Love, who finished runner-up in the Honda for the second successive year, preferred to take the positives away from Palm Beach.

"I'm playing pretty good," he insisted. "I'm scrambling pretty good and hanging in there . . . so I think if I keep working at it, I'll be ready for the Players Championship," he said. It was the 25th runner-up finish of Love's career.

Meanwhile, Hamilton gets the opportunity to tee up in this week's Bay Hill Invitational as a champion, and there will be an even higher percentage of European players in action than usual with Darren Clarke - playing the first of three tournaments in a four-week spell - joined by among others Thomas Bjorn, Paul Casey, Lee Westwood, Ian Poulter, Justin Rose and Phillip Price. Padraig Harrington doesn't play again until next week's Players Championship at Sawgrass.

Paul McGinley's intensive stretch of tournament play continues in this week's Caltex Masters, a dual-sanctioned tournament on the European Tour and the Asian circuit.

McGinley, who missed the cut in Qatar after his runner-up finish to Mark O'Meara in the previous week's Dubai Desert Classic, is joined by Peter Lawrie and Damien McGrane in the field in Singapore.

Order of Merit (Irish positions) - 1 Darren Clarke €449,122; 5 Padraig Harrington 296,474; 13 Paul McGinley 200,118; 41 Peter Lawrie €63,505; 79 Gary Murphy 28,107; 88 Damien McGrane 26,565; 123 Graeme McDowell 13,057.