Goosen will be No1 on merit

For a golfer who has already won a staggering £1.6 million in prize money on the European Tour this season, the sum of £32,000 might seem relatively trifling to Retief Goosen.

But that is all the Surrey-based South African needs to bank from two tournaments in Spain in order to become the first non-European winner of the Volvo Order of Merit since Greg Norman in 1982.

Indeed, Goosen will almost certainly cap a momentous year in which he has already won his first major, the US Open, by reaching the latter stages of the Madrid Open, which starts tomorrow.

The only player who can beat Goosen to the Order of Merit crown is Ryder Cup star Darren Clarke, who is just under half a million pounds in arrears.

However, the cigar-chomping Ulsterman will need to win in Madrid and hope Goosen fails to make the halfway cut for the title race to go down to the final event of the season - the Volvo Masters in Jerez from 8-11 November.

The possibility of Goosen playing that badly is unlikely in the extreme.

He has failed to play on into the weekend just twice in 20 starts on the Tour this season. Goosen's form has enabled him to enjoy six top-10 finishes in his nine events since that US Open triumph at Southern Hills in June.

Indeed, he confirmed his new sobriquet of 'Mr Consistency' by returning four identical cards of three under 69 in the Dunhill Links Championship won by Paul Lawrie on Monday.

But Clarke, who was beaten to the Order of Merit by close friend Lee Westwood in a dramatic duel during last November's Volvo Masters, hasn't given up hope.

He admitted: "I knew Lee wanted it as badly as I did last year. Winning the Order of Merit is certainly up there among the titles I consider most important."