Poignant journey for the Ponty boy who triumphed after 20 years of tribulation

Phillip Price interview: Failure wasn't an option for this Ryder Cup hero. Andrew Longmore meets a modest man after his mighty achievement

Phil Mickelson had no chance. It only becomes clear now when Phillip Price talks in his gentle lilt about the forces at work on that extra-ordinary final afternoon at The Belfry. There was never any doubt. In his mind, often a place of uncertainty and torment, Price had settled the issue, and no matter how many people thought the match between the world's No 2 and No 119 would be a mismatch, the only thing bothering the Welshman was how to stay ahead.

"My plan was to get up, get into him and just drill him into the floor, which is pretty much the way I played," he says. It was all over on the 16th, 3 & 2, and though Paul McGinley claimed the final half-point to push the European team over the line, the emphatic dismantling of Mickelson, a banker for the US, was the critical symbol of the home team's resurgence.

Not a few weeks before, Price's confidence had been so low he was wondering whether to withdraw from the whole event to save himself and his team from the embarrassment.

At St Andrews last week, not even the enlivening company of Ian Botham, Gareth Edwards and Ian Woosnam in the Dunhill Links Championship could pull Price out of his reverie. His eyes told you the story. He played well enough, following a 69 round the Old Course with a 68 at Carnoustie. Perhaps he should play on autopilot every week. But half of his mind was back in the sunlight of The Belfry and the other half was looking to the future and an ambitious attempt, announced last week, to claim his place on the United States Tour through the qualifying school, a dog-eat-dog tournament which will make the Ryder Cup seem as irrelevant as a club four-ball. A round of six hours did not aid his powers of concentration.

"Everything this week seems to be revolving around what happened in the Ryder Cup and I'm still a bit there really," he says. "It's a flatness, I suppose. I just didn't seem to be with it today, though I played quite well. It's not easy, because you've got your partner and so you're trying to look after him a bit as well."

Ten days ago, the only publicity he had was negative; on Monday, a television crew was camping outside his house in Newport to welcome home the hero. "A bit of a change, really, considering it was only one round of golf," he smiles.

Just one round, but a round forged by a lifetime. By his father, who lent the youngest of his three sons money when none was available, by all those who said that young Phil was not quite good enough, by his own self-doubt and by the growing army of critics who questioned his worthiness to be on the Ryder Cup team last year and this. Phil Mickelson had to play an awful lot of Phil Price last Sunday afternoon.

The emotions were largely kept in check then; a few days on, in the new clubhouse at St Andrew's, they surface with unexpected force. Talking about the hardships of his boyhood, Price is close to tears. That victory over Mickelson might just have been one match, but you sense it marked the triumphant end of a 20-year struggle for recognition. Until Sunday evening, Price was not truly convinced he was good enough to take on the best. Now he knows.

"I learnt from that match that I had the ability to hack it with the best, that I can perform well under enormous stress," he says. "You don't know, you don't know whether you can. I found I could. My goal is to be a world-class player, and to do that you have to be top 10 in the world, competing in the Majors, winning the biggest tournaments. I haven't done that. But Phil Mickelson is a world-class player and we were in a world-class environment."

But it is more than that. Simon Curle used to play county golf with Price, maybe 15 years ago now. Looking back, he recalls two things: the first is that Price was the same ordinary, genuine, guy back then that he is now, the other is that there was nothing particularly remarkable about his golf game. "You never looked at him and thought: 'Yes, he's going to make it in the pros'. I am sure he would admit that a lot of players had more talent than him. But Phil had the determination. He knew where he wanted to go."

Richard Dixon, secretary of the Welsh Golfing Union, was talking to Price quite recently about those early days as an amateur. "You know," Dixon said, "you were thought of as only the fourth or fifth best amateur in the country." "Who thought that?" asked Price. "People like me, I suppose," said Dixon. "I never saw it that way," Price answered. "I knew what I had to do to make a difference."

On the morning of the Duncan Putter, an invitational tournament for young amateurs in Wales, won by Paul Way and Peter McEvoy among others, Price once waited by the first tee all the first day as first reserve. When a player failed to show, Price took his place and won the event. It is memories like these that now choke Price, the time that he borrowed money off his parents to fund his next tournament when his father was ill and there was not much money in the house. "Desperate," he says, "I wouldn't want to go through it again." For a year, in his early twenties, he gave up golf and sold insurance.

"At the time, I couldn't afford to do the things I wanted to do and I felt a bit lost," he recalls. "I did so many jobs just to finance my golf and it wasn't going very far, so I wasn't going to bother with it any more. It was a very sensitive time. I wanted to be successful... [long pause] badly, and golf was the only thing I wanted to do. It was either that or the factories, and I didn't want to go there. There was only one choice. It wasn't an option to fail."

The impossibility of going back has been at the heart of his tenacious and often unglamorous climb through the professional ranks. But the insecurity of the boy from Ponty has never been completely banished, the inner demons that kept reminding him that he still wasn't good enough.

The progress has been painfully slow. He will be 36 in two weeks. "I'm just a late starter," he says. "I've improved enormously over the past four years. Some guys don't keep improving, but I think I do. I still have lots of different goals. I want to win the Order of Merit in Europe and I want a world ranking in the top 10. I just need to learn a few more skills, get a bit more self-confidence and improve my swing a little."

Even now, you can hear the voices. Hey, steady on, Phil lad. Top 10 in the world? Order of Merit? Not so fast. But then "Phil Price, Ryder Cup hero" would have been an unlikely tag not that long ago. On the Monday morning, driving away from The Belfry, the overwhelming feeling was one of relief. "I got a lot of respect from people, good players, for producing something in that situation. Before, I'd not produced the form of some of the other players, so I wasn't going to be respected. You have to earn it."

Yet only Price will fully know the extent of the sacrifices made to fulfil the ambition of becoming a Ryder Cup player. For the past two years, the event has dominated his life, from playing tournament after tournament to cling on to his place during the autumn of the 2001 season through the inexplicable loss of form these past six months. The closer the Ryder Cup came, the harder he worked to find some form, and the worse he played. He missed five cuts in nine tournaments before The Belfry.

"I was aware of the Ryder Cup the whole time," he says. "If I had a bad round, I knew the conversations were going to be the same and I knew there was nothing I could do to stop them. The worst thing was that I knew what everyone was saying was true. The guys were telling me that playing the Ryder Cup would be the most nervous I would ever feel, it's the world stage, and I'm trying to find some form and I couldn't. I was playing awful."

Price took the week off before the Ryder Cup. He played a couple of rounds at Celtic Manor with some friends and, suddenly, almost magically, the natural hook which signals a breakdown of technique had vanished, the feel had returned. By the time he drove into the gates of The Belfry, his confidence was at least ground under repair. Three strong days of practice and the reassuring presence of Sam Torrance completed the transformation. Paired with fellow rookie Pierre Fulke in the foursomes on Saturday afternoon, Price led Phil Mickelson and David Toms through much of the round before losing 2 & 1. Far from being overawed by his debut, the Welshman relished the fight. Mickelson, he thought, was not enjoying himself.

"I felt stronger in a pair with Pierre and I took that strength with me into the singles the next day. I'd sensed then that Mickelson wasn't that confident and I think he knew he'd be in for a hard time, because I'd played well for 12 holes or so the previous day.

"It was just a complete shock when I saw the list of singles that night. Sam hadn't said a word, and as a rule you put your experienced, good pressure players at the end, as they did. I felt if I could produce a real turnaround in a match they expected to win it would be a massive swing in our favour. But what goes through your mind is that the Ryder Cup could depend on you. Second-last match? It's going to come down around there somewhere."

Then, it was just a matter of staying positive. Alan Fine, Price's long-time psychologist, had travelled from America. "Sometimes I feel as if I shouldn't be winning," says Price. "He made sure I wasn't afraid to win." The test came on the sixth. One up already, it seemed odds-on the American would square the match when a magnificent approach shot landed three feet from the hole. But Price's eight-iron from the edge of a hazard landed seven feet away, and when he rolled home the putt for birdie, Mickelson's usually infallible putter let him down. Price went two up, won the next and doggedly resisted the American's charge over the back nine.

"It would have been very easy to get scared, up against a world-class player, but whatever he did I felt as though I was going to jump right back on him again. I didn't look at the other scores, I didn't pay attention to anything else other than what I was trying to do. I just got into my own little world."

Who knows what Phillip Price can now achieve? He has never much cared for the parameters on his talent prescribed by others. He is off to pastures new, to the United States, where the best players in the world ply their trade week after week. It is not a bad time to move, as a winning Ryder Cup player. "They won't care who the hell I am," he says. "But I'm there to finish what I need to finish. It's not a social trip."

If anyone is tempted to underestimate Ponty's Man of the Year 1994 across the pond, it might be advisable to have a word first with Phil Mickelson.

Biography: Phillip Price

Born: 21 October 1966 in Pontypridd.

Lives: Newport, Gwent.

Turned pro: 1989.

Majors: None.

Career highlights: Winner of 1994 and 2001 Portuguese Opens, runner-up in the 2000 WGC-NEC Open, runner-up with Ian Woosnam in 1991 World Cup.

Order of Merit for past five years: 1997 39th, 1998 15th, 1999 36th, 2000 8th, 2001 21st.

Current world ranking: 118th.

Ryder Cup record: 2002: Singles, winner 3 & 2 over Phil Mickelson; Foursomes with Pierre Fulke, lost 2 & 1 to Mickelson and David Toms. Qualifying position: 10th.

Also: Pontypridd Man of the Year in 1994.