Albatross leaves Lawrie

Paul Lawrie celebrates on the eighteenth green

BBC Sport Online's Clive Lindsay profiles Dunhill Links Championship winner Paul Lawrie.

Since his extraordinary victory in the 1999 Open, Paul Lawrie has earned a reputation for being less than media friendly.

But victory at the Dunhill Links Championship at St Andrews had the 32-year-old Aberdonian embracing the spotlight with open arms and a smile tinged as much with relief as joy.

It was Lawrie's first tournament success for two years - and he was not going to pass up a rare chance to celebrate.

He performed admirably against the USA in the Ryder Cup at Brookline and has been there or thereabouts in countless tournaments.

But Monday's 40-foot birdie putt from the famous Valley of Sin brought to an end an 28-month struggle to convince the English-based media in particular that victory at The Open at Carnoustie was anything more than a flash in the pan.

I was not cracking up over not winning, but I wanted to desperately

Paul Lawrie

The 1999 staging of the most prestigious event in world golf has since been portrayed as the one Jean van de Velde threw away rather than the one Paul Lawrie won.

By edging out Ernie Els at St Andrews, £551,000 flew into his pocket and an albatross was lifted from the brawny shoulders that span his 5ft 11in frame.

"I had a few chances after The Open to win again, but it's so hard to do it," he admitted. "Every player is a good player now.

"I was not cracking up over not winning, but I wanted to desperately.

"Maybe I was trying too hard. When you win The Open, you can't help but expect to win more tournaments."

Lawrie insists that he did not feel under pressure.

But it is perhaps significant that his latest victory comes only three tournaments after leaving IMG's sports management stable and joining World Golf Solutions, a Manchester-based agency, as their No.1 golfer.

Paul Lawrie with The Open trophy

They will be almost as delighted as the golfer himself that victory at St Andrews moves him from 33rd to eighth on the European Order of Merit and back into the world's top 100.

Lawrie, backed by a consortium of local businessmen, sprang to prominence in 1992, when he won the 1992 UAP Under-25s Championship by eight strokes then finished sixth in the 1993 Open Championship behind Greg Norman.

From then it was a case of quiet, steady, unspectacular progress until that scintillating, final-round 67 at Carnoustie propelled him to stardom after Van de Velde sent his ball into final-hole water to set-up a nail-biting play-off.

Lawrie has been saying all year that he had again been playing well without holing the putts.

This time they fell in abundance and an 18-under-par aggregate in conditions that threatened the very completion of the tournament suggests that Lawrie will not have to wait as long again for his next big pay day.