JOHAN EDFORS

Johan Edfors is entitled to feel very happy with life. As he sticks his name on the leaderboard overlooking the practice green at Wentworth Club he’s saluted, mocked and waved at by fellow tour pros, European Tour staff and sponsors alike.

Everybody wants to know Johan Edfors nowadays. Having spent the best part of a decade bouncing back and forth between the Challenge and European Tours, he’s finally made it. Big time. In fact, only David Howell has matched his tournament double so far this season.

His first tour victory came in March at the TCL Classic, carding no higher than 68 all week. Then came his second win of the season at last month’s Quinn Direct British Masters, when he stuck to his big-hitting guns while the rest

of the field melted away. He walks the walk too, decked out in Puma gear and firing the ball comfortably over the 300-yard mark off the tee. And much as it might appear a touch crass to the golfing purist, a leap in earnings from 33,000 euros to over 650,000 euros in six months is bound to bring a smile to anyone’s face.

Can you remember your biggest pay day before this season?

“It’s difficult to say... Maybe when I won the Fortis Challenge Open in Holland in 2003 on the Challenge Tour, or it might have been when I finished 39th in the SAP Open on the European Tour a year later. Either way, it wasn’t a very big cheque.”

How do you actually get paid the money?

Most pros we talk to don’t seem to have the faintest idea...

“They send it into one of your accounts. It doesn’t feel like real money. It feels like a bit of a joke. But when you win in Britain you have to pay a lot of tax.”

But what’s he really like? Normally, you wouldn’t make a snap judgement on the basis of half a day snatching words and pictures in between a helicopter ride round Alhama, a press conference conducted in a marquee stuck in the middle of an arid plain and a drinks reception with the great and good of Murcia.

» Johan Edfors Part 2