When the bill arrived at Earl's restaurant south of Denver, Colorado, on Tuesday last week, there was a rush to take it. You see, some golfers, including Retief Goosen and Sergio Garcia, and a gaggle of caddies had gathered for an early get-together meal before the International in Castle Pines.

The enthusiasm for paying the bill goes back to the end of last year when Retief picked up the check at a similar gathering in Atlanta before the Tour Championship and ended up winning the tournament.

It has been a standing joke ever since that the player who pays for dinner on Tuesday night wins the tournament. I know it sounds like a lot of rubbish but golfers are superstitious.

Playing certain numbered golf balls on certain days and wearing certain clothes on other days is important to some.

Paying for dinner on the right night seems to work for my boss. So every time we saw Sergio during last week he jibed, "It's in the bag, everyone else is playing for second place because 'Goose' bought dinner the other night."

How right Sergio was, but I wouldn't want to test that theory too often.

The fact is that a course like Castle Pines, set over a mile high outside Denver, suits a player like Retief. At altitude the player who has a high ball-flight gets the most advantage from the thin air. So naturally a course of considerable length is radically shortened for a long hitter.

The fairways were soft after Thursday's deluge, which meant those who carried the ball a long way had a further advantage.

Retief has had a slow year by his very high standards. Despite good finishes throughout the season, his game has not been where he would have liked it to be.

Having missed the cut in Hamburg a few weeks ago, we went to California to play with Phil Mickelson against Tiger Woods and John Daly. It wasn't a tournament, but if you play badly at one of these exhibitions you can look fairly stupid given the extensive TV coverage.

Retief played great after a shaky start, and he and Phil ended up finishing the game early, winning 4 and 3. I am sure it was a confidence booster.

It is always satisfying to beat the world's best golfer. No matter what he plays in, he plays to win. I witnessed that first-hand in California a few weeks ago.

Tiger is hungry for success even at a relatively unimportant event.

Retief then went back to Orlando for a week off and worked on a few things at the range. It's always easier to work on your game away from a tournament. At an event players are focused on scoring and not swing tampering. So Retief came to Castle Pines feeling more comfortable with his swing, having spent a refreshing week at home and with a modest victory under his belt. He hit the ball a lot better than he has done for a while.

Despite hitting a couple of errant drives on the par fives during the week, including one on the 17th, where the bush was so dense that if Retief hadn't been wearing a brightly coloured shirt I would have been hard pressed to figure out what direction to pass his wedge to as his hand stretched out of the undergrowth to take it. His drive had catapulted off the cart path to end up so far from the fairway.

Being the fearless player that he is, and given the Stableford formula of the International event at Castle Pines, he managed on both near-futile situations to get the ball back in play and avoid making destructive double-bogeys.

He also hit his tee-shot out of bounds on the par-five first hole of the third round and made a four with his second ball. It is an indication of the tenacity of Retief Goosen that he can continue to score even though he has hit some poor shots.

Tenacity was the order for last Sunday, when we were obliged to play 36 holes around the tough walking course of Castle Pines owing to the rain delay earlier in the week. There was no doubt that fatigue was a major factor during the fourth round.

It's not so much the physical fatigue as the mental drain of concentrating for over 10 hours of competition, which wears on even the fittest of competitors.

So it was a case of hanging on during the back nine of the final round rather than going forward. It was down to survival of the fittest.

The key par for Retief came on the par-three 16th. Having hit a shot that I never thought he could hit - basically a duff 10 yards short of the green, which must have been a manifestation of fatigue - he then went on to make a dramatic recovery by chipping the ball to about four feet and holing the putt for par. He also left himself a putt of over three feet on the last for par, which he made.

Winning a tournament is about getting the job done: not necessarily hitting great shots, but hitting the right ones. This is what Retief is very good at when the pressure is on.

He knows how to get the job done, he knows what it takes to win, but it all starts with paying for dinner on Tuesday night.