One win, and one bold play, has changed David Toms' life. Apart from the $936,000 he got for winning the USPGA championship at Atlanta Athletic Club - and the commercial spin-offs that accrue to a major winner - the player's schedule for the rest of the season has changed, starting with his entry into this week's NEC Invitational in Akron.

Add in the Ryder Cup, and the mega-bucks season-ending Grand Slam of Golf in Hawaii (he will share billing with Tiger Woods, Retief Goosen and David Duval, the other major winners this season), and Toms knows his world will never be the same again.

After Mickelson, his rival coming down the stretch in Sunday's showdown, handed Toms the lead with a three-putt bogey from 45 feet on the 16th, the defining moment came on the finishing hole when Toms's tee-shot found a terrible lie. Off a downslope in the rough, with 209 yards to clear the water, Toms initially toyed with the idea of going for the green with his five-wood.

Mickelson, looking across and attempting not to care what choice he made, acknowledged later: "I was hoping he would go for it." Toms, though, was wrestling with his decision - and decided to put the fairway wood back in the bag, and use a wedge for lay-up instead.

"I had to do it. The crowd were ooohing and ahhhing and moaning. They're thinking 'you wimp, is this the Chip Beck thing all over again'?" said Toms, a reference to Beck's decision in the 1993 US Masters to lay-up on the Par 5 15th at Augusta National.

Beck's play backfired, Bernhard Langer won by four strokes, and poor Chip has never heard the end of it. But Toms's move to lay-up - and then hit his sand wedge approach to 12 feet and hole the par-putt to take the title - proved to be a wise one.

In this game, at this level, professionals will tell you that they have an eight in 10 chance of getting up and down from 88 yards with a lob wedge in their hands, and Toms played the percentage game and won.

For Mickelson, though, it was another case of being spurned again. Incredibly, in his closest calls in the four majors, a three-putt on the 16th green has proven costly time and time again. On Sunday, he three-putted from 45 feet to hand Toms a lead he was never to relinquish; in the US Masters in April, he three-putted the 16th from 35 feet, and Woods went on to win by three; and, in the 1999 US Open, he three-putted the 16th at Pinehurst and lost by one to Payne Stewart. He also three-putted the 16th in last year's British Open at St Andrews, but he wasn't close to winner Woods at the time.

"I'm confident in the way I have been able to play in these championships, but it is frustrating that I haven't been able to break through. I know the off-season will be long. I felt this would be a breakthrough year. I've been playing better than ever. . . . I just wasn't able to beat everyone in the field," said Mickelson.

It means Mickelson will have to wait eight months for the chance to rid himself of the tag 'best-player-never-to-have-won-a-major', by which time he will be a father for the second time. On Sunday night, he left the Atlanta Atheltic Club with his arm around his pregnant wife Amy, and said: "I'm not going to beat myself up. There is a long time in between majors. People are talking one win. I am trying to win a bunch of majors."

While Mickelson and Toms move on to Akron - for the $5 million world golf championship event, which has a limited field - the three Irish players competing in the event arrived there at various stages over the past few days.

Darren Clarke and Padraig Harrington missed the cut at the US PGA (it was Clarke's first missed cut since the South African Open in January and Harrington's first since missing out in the European Masters 12 months ago) and had moved on in advance of Paul McGinley, who finished tied-22nd in Atlanta.

The top 12 players in the European Ryder Cup standings after the USPGA earned places in the field in Akron, which proved costly for Andrew Coltart (13th) and Andrew Oldcorn (14th) who failed to make inroads on the two players ahead of them, Miguel Angel Jimenez and Ian Poulter, and consequently have returned to compete in the Scottish PGA this week in the hope of boosting their Ryder Cup aspirations.