GOLF: My secret agony

RYDER CUP hero Paul McGinley has revealed for the first time the agony he went through just to be part of last year's European triumph over the USA at Oakland Hills.

And the 34-year-old Dubliner is still paying the price for his brave performance.

Only sheer determination to win enough money to qualify for Bernhard Langer's team helped him through 10 punishing weeks of tournament golf last summer while hiding a chronic knee injury.

McGinley said: "It was so painful and so bad that I couldn't even practise.

"At the end of play each day during those 10 weeks I just went back to my hotel and laid my leg up.

"But I had to make the effort. Sinking the winning putt in my first Ryder Cup at The Belfry was a fairytale, but I wanted to play in it again. I felt it was something I had to close out in my career."

McGinley shattered his left kneecap at the age of 19, which ruined a promising career in Gaelic football. Surgeons carried out sufficient repairs for McGinley to take up golf full-time, but years of walking the fairways of the world have taken their toll.

At the start of last summer McGinley began to feel pain, but having got a whiff of Ryder Cup selection with a second-place finish in the Dubai Desert Classic, he decided to play on.

From the French Open in mid-June through to the final Ryder Cup qualifying event, the BMW in Munich in late August, he ignored the pain barrier and refused to take a week off.

And he had to go all the way. It was only when he parred the 18th hole in the final round in Munich after having picked up a penalty shot that he had enough cash in the bank to make Langer's team.

McGinley went to Oakland Hills, picked up half-a-point partnering rookie Luke Donald in the opening fourballs, helped fellow Irishman Padraig Harrington beat Tiger Woods in the Saturday foursomes, and completed a personal triumph with a singles victory against Stewart Cink.

It was only in November, when McGinley finally agreed to surgery on the knee for the second time, that the extent of the injury was revealed. McGinley added: "The kneecap was OK, the surgeons in Dublin had done a good job putting the jigsaw of the kneecap back together.

"But the damage around it from all the golf I had played was bad. I had cartilage damage on both sides of the kneecap and a cyst behind it."

And McGinley's troubles are not over.

He returned to the practice ground last Sunday for the first time, only for the knee to go into spasm for two days.

Like the other members of the Ryder Cup team, he has a special exemption to play on the US Tour this year and had hoped to make a comeback at next month's AT&T pro-am at Pebble Beach.

He resumed practice again on Wednesday, but is not sure when he will be fit for tournament golf again.

McGinley said: "I don't want to delay too long.

"I need to get my world ranking up. I am 64th at the moment, but I need to get into the top 50 to play in The Masters.

"Only Colin Montgomerie and myself from the Ryder Cup team are not in The Masters and that's given me something to aim for."

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