Not only did the favourite not win, he hardly made a race of it. Despite being two behind with 18 holes to play in the Victor Chandler British Masters, Colin Montgomerie was installed as an odds-on chance, at 4 to 7, to beat the overnight leader Gary Orr and win the £133,330 sterling first prize.
But Montgomerie, the European number one these past seven years, failed completely to get the distance and trailed in a remote third, three shots behind Orr and in poor heart for next week's US PGA championship.
Orr became the third player who had broken the course record over the Duke's course at Woburn to go on and win the tournament. Peter Baker set the record with 63 in 1993, Ian Woosnam equalled it the following year, and this year Orr had a 62 in the second round that gave him a lead he never relinquished.
His total of 267, 21 under par, was good enough to win by two from Per-Ulrik Johansson and by three from Montgomerie, with Mark McNulty a further stroke back. It was Orr's second win both of the season and his eight-year professional career on the European tour.
Montgomerie, eyes on the ground, visor over his eyes, could only chunter that his performance, a final round of 71, was "very poor. For someone of my calibre to be doing that, well, that's very poor".
Which is not to take away from Orr's solid, if unspectacular, final round of 70. After the third round Montgomerie had said: "I need to have caught Gary by the ninth." And in the event he had picked up both the shots by which he trailed after only two holes. He holed from six feet at the first, hit his tee shot to the short second to two feet, and that was him level.
Orr could have been forgiven for taking fright, for here was the world's number four golfer playing flawlessly and, as a consequence, gaining in confidence. Instead he consoled himself by saying that he half-expected something of the sort.
"There would have been nothing I could have done," he said later, "I could only control my own game. It's not easy playing Monty but I'm pleased with the way I reacted."
Strangely, after that start, Montgomerie disappeared. He was never again close to Orr and said ruefully afterwards: "For the last 16 holes I was one over par, which is very poor. Every shot I hit after the first two holes gave Gary confidence."
In fact Orr birdied the fourth, where Montgomerie could only par, and at the fifth the latter missed a short putt so tiny that in matchplay it might have been conceded. He missed another at the ninth from barely 15 inches as the ball hit the edge of the hole and horse-shoed out, leaving Montgomerie standing in disbelief.
That gave Orr a four-stroke advantage, something he had neither expected nor knew quite how to cope with. "I kept telling myself," he admitted, "not to get carried away, and that there were some difficult holes to come."
And so there were, but with his margin Orr was able to play them conservatively, even to the extent of taking an iron off the final tee when he still had that four-shot advantage.
He goes to the US PGA this week in Louisville for what will be his first tournament of any kind in the United States. He does so placed seventh in the European Order of Merit, but at the age of 34 he will be competing in only the sixth major championship of his career.