I always felt I had a chance of winning it and probably should have won it without the play-off but it was quite tough.
Gordon J Brand will hope his winter practice sessions at Pinheiros Alto in Portugal reap more dividends in the 2009 season than those achieved by FI teams McLaren and Ferrari.
The motorsport giants tested at the nearby Estorial circuit and FI fan Brand was a regular spectator. "I didn't realise they were going so slowly!" said the quietly spoken Yorkshireman in reference to the poor pace shown by the Messrs Hamilton, Massa and Co. during the early part of the season.
Portugal is the winter base for the Brand family and, apart from the cost of baked beans (£1 a can), is a happy refuge for the 53-year-old to hone his game for what will be his fourth full season on the European Senior Tour. And after a steady start to his campaign, Brand will be aiming to hit top gear in the De Vere Collection PGA Seniors Championship at Slaley Hall and retain the title he won last year after an epic play-off with Gordon Brand Junior.
The pair were locked in stalemate in what was dubbed the 'Battle of the Brands', unable to be separated despite five attempts at the 18th. 'Groundhog Day' was Brand's assessment before he finally clinched the flagship title amid the gathering gloom on the par three 17th - some 90 minutes after the regulation 72 holes had been completed.
"It was a great achievement to win last year on what I consider a good championship golf course," Brand said. "I always felt I had a chance of winning it and probably should have won it without the play-off but it was quite tough."
That victory was followed by another at the Travis Perkins Senior Masters and Brand went onto finish runner up behind Ian Woosnam in the order of merit, his best since joining the European Senior Tour in August 2005.
A keen (but lapsed) drawer and sketcher, Brand has an eye for detail and his sights are set firmly on defending his PGA title over the Dave Thomas-designed Hunting Course, which he believes suits his game.
"I suppose I've got a certain amount of confidence going into the championship because the course suits me," he added. "It's a big course and you need to be fairly accurate and, although I'm not the longest hitter, I can hit longer irons fairly straight."
Laser accurate iron-play is a legacy of a passion for the game that began aged 14 on the invitation of his next door neighbour to come and hit a few balls at Baildon Golf Club, near to his Shipley home in Yorkshire.
Other sporting pursuits of football and cricket soon bit the dust. "At 15 I decided to stick to golf," Brand recalled. "I was getting going, practising a fair bit, starting to hit the ball further quite quickly and improvement generally was relatively quick, so I thought 'I can do this!'"
In those days it didn't seem to matter whether it was £100k first prize or one million pounds.
Representative honours for Yorkshire and England youths followed before he took the plunge and turned pro in 1976 alongside the likes of Sandy Lyle, Nick Faldo and Ian Woosnam.
"It got to a point where if I was going to get any better I was going to have to turn pro and play professionally against the best players," he said. He more than held his own, winning seven times on the Safari Tour including three Ivory Coast Opens and two Nigerian Opens.
His sole European Tour success came at the Belgian Open in 1989. Other career highlights include winning the 1987 Dunhill Cup with Nick Faldo and Howard Clark and an Open Championship silver medal from 1986 when he finished second to Greg Norman at Turnberry. It helped him to a best-ever fifth placed finish in the Order of Merit.
"I was not surprised to do well, my attitude was if I played well I expected to finish high," said Brand who gained revenge on Norman when he held him off at the Spanish Senior Open in 2006 to win his maiden Senior title. "In those days it didn't seem to matter whether it was £100k first prize or one million pounds and it didn't bother me that it was a Major."
Another career highlight was winning the Dunhill Cup in 87 with Nick Faldo and Howard Clark but what should have perhaps been his career defining moment proved less memorable when he was selected for the 1983 Ryder Cup team under Tony Jacklin.
"I wasn't playing that well and I only got picked for the singles, which I lost two down," Brand explained.
"It was nerve-wracking in the singles nonetheless. I didn't score that badly but funnily what I remember is my opponent (Bob Gilder) thought he was really lucky - he said 'you nearly got me' but I didn't feel as they I ever got close to him, he was expecting the worst out of him and the best out of me."
Brand brought the career down on his regular Tour career at the turn of the millennium and during the wait for seniors golf, Brand competed on the PGA North Region circuit and also ran a car wash and valeting business service in Ilkley. "It was hard work," says Brand.
His passage to senior golf included two years on the tour as a rules referee, a role Brand enjoyed. Not so, some of his peers.
"Apparently I was not very generous with giving opinion drops," he admitted. "But, unlike F1, where everything is calculated to the nano-second, it's not an exact science!"
22 June, 2009 | The PGA