Golf: Els in his element dodging Carnoustie thunderbolts

Ernie Els returned from Carnoustie last week with a bulletin on the jungle rough, stair- carpet fairways and general length of the Angus links. He was delighted. The South African, like all golfers of achievement, insists he revels in treacherous circumstances. It is an implicit acknowledgement that the vanguard can play through the thunderbolts which hit the ordinary. It is the self-belief of major winners.

"With any golfer at the top level there is a bit of cockiness in there, though you don't have to show it," Els says. "I like it when the boys have to struggle a little bit and it's not just a putting contest. And it certainly won't be that."

Els came back from his reconnaissance mission in Tayside to his home, within sugar-borrowing distance of Augusto Pinochet on the Wentworth estate, to declare he had just seen the most strangling rough of his life. When the 128th Open launches on the east coast of Scotland on Thursday only the fittest will survive. "It's going to be really long and really tough," Els said. "If we have any kind of a wind, level par will be a great score and four over might win it.

"I played the course in the Scottish Open three years which Woosie won. He shot one over and won by two. Nobody was under par. And we didn't have the Open rough that year."

They call Els the Big Easy. He possesses the power of the variety show strong-man and the dexterity of the plate-spinner. His memoryman act is not bad either and he has already logged away the holes on which the championship will turn.

"There are par fours you're going to be hitting two iron or a three wood into," he says. "And the 16th, a par three, might need the driver. The 18th is a par five in my view, even though they call it a par four with the burn all over the place.

"It's an amazingly tough golf course, the toughest of all the links courses. When it blows, this and Pebble Beach are the most difficult in the world. On a calm day you ask yourself why the bunkers are where they are, even though you can't see most of them from the tee. When the wind blows you find out.

"The bunkering at these links is amazing. You'd think it would be easier playing these courses, centuries old, with the new technology. But all they do is move the tee back 20 yards and you're back to where it was, how those old guys were playing."

At 7,361 yards, Carnoustie will be the longest Open examination of them all. "I hope it brings my whole game into play," Els says. "You've got to have a short game. You've got to be putting, you've got to be hitting it good, especially with the driver. At any Open, if you don't drive it well you don't win. You've got to be a shotmaker."

These days Ernie Els is a homemaker, too. He moved recently with his wife Liezl to Surrey, where they live with 10-week-old Samantha. "I love it here," he says. "You can play Europe and you can get across the Atlantic without any trouble. I will stay here in the summer and go back to South Africa for the winter."

He likes the colonial ways, does Ernie, and, as he talks to you over disappearing pints at a promotion by Omega, one of his sponsors, you understand there is something else about this land he quite likes, too.

The feeling is reciprocal. There is an appealing nonchalance about Els that only the English would appreciate: the idea that you can win without trying too hard. It is the old aristocratic notion of a hundred before lunch at Lord's after a night out at a gentleman's club. Ernie has also been ingratiating himself with a neighbouring country, one with its own parliament.

"I just wish they would play more tournaments in Scotland," he says. "That's where golf started and where the old style of game is played. Scottish golf courses are brilliant. I love it up there." Unless he turns up this morning, as scheduled, wearing a kilt, the South African will not be able to better that as a piece of public relations.

The fact is, though, that the man who is preceded by only Tiger Woods, David Duval and Colin Montgomerie in the bookmakers' hierarchy does not have a singles win on Caledonian soil to his name (he has won the Dunhill Cup at St Andrews in company with Retief Goosen and David Frost). It was a position Monty himself was in until victory at Loch Lomond at the weekend. "I haven't played too much in Scotland," Els replies. "I've played Gleneagles, but I just didn't have a feel for that course and I've finished second at Loch Lomond. So I've not won a tournament but I've had some good finishes."

And Scotland, as Edward I might have said, is a rare blemish. Ernie Els is the only man under 30 with two majors to his name. He has won three consecutive World Matchplay titles in what is now his back garden at Wentworth and has recorded 23 other tournament victories. His US Opens came, first, at Oakmont and then at Congressional. "In 1994 I was just playing well at the time," he says. "I had confidence, I was cocky, I was going for it. In 1997 I just loved getting in that position again. That feeling in the final round. I want it back."

And then there are the ones that got away. "In 1996 at Royal Lytham [in the Open] I finished bogey-par-bogey and if I'd have finished with three pars I'd have forced [Tom] Lehman to make four pars coming in and that might have been a little different," he says. "In 1995 I let a three-shot lead slip away in the final round at Riviera [in the USPGA]. So I've won two and lost two."

Els is quite satisfied with that, for the time being at least. "I've been playing all four majors since 1994. This is my sixth year. So, from the start of this season, I had won two out of 20 majors, which I think is not bad," he says. "You look at guys that really got hot, like [Nick] Faldo. He won his first major [at Muirfield in 1987] when he was about 30 and four more in the next five years.

"He learned a lot between starting out in the game and where I am now. When you're 24 and you're 250 yards away you might give it a go. You might make it seven times out of 10 but in a major that's not good enough."

For the benefit of this theory, Els himself will be 30 in October. He considers he is ready. "It's been two years [since a major] and I've got to start building again," he says. "But I'm confident enough to know that if I go into the final round with a chance to win I can pull it off. It's nice to know you've done it before.

"I've done pretty good at the Open with a couple of top 10s. Now I've got enough experience to draw on to play a top course like this one. I believe I will win more. I'll prove myself again. I expect a hot streak myself."

This week would be a good time to start. Els has had a particularly frustrating 1999 season, shooting an 80 in the final round of the Masters when he should have been contending and then missing the cut by a shot in the US Open at Pinehurst. He absented himself from Loch Lomond last week for practice elsewhere and to look after wife and daughter. There are some who say that Samantha Els is doing all the sudden waking up in her family these days and that her father could do with shaking himself.

However, when the winds and golfers start groaning at Carnoustie this week Papa Els will be one of the few with the attributes for the task. "This whole majors thing is built up to be such a big event that going to the final nine, if you're anywhere near, you can start thinking: `This would be great if I could win', and that's dangerous," he says. "But your whole career does change when you win a major.

"Most of the players will go in there [this week] to make the cut, have a good tournament and get out of there with a good finish. There are only a handful of guys who will go in there with the expectation of winning." Ernie Els, despite his current form, remains steadfastly in the latter group.