SPORTING PASSIONS DAMIEN McGRANE Mark Roddenhears the China Open winner describe how his favourite way of unwinding from life on tour is to try his hand at fishing

I DO A bit of fishing in my recreational time and I would have played a lot of handball in my day. I played handball with a local club in Kells, Co Meath, and I would have played it quite competitively. Then I moved on and played pitch and putt for a few years competitively and went from there.

I prefer to play my own game. I always found with team games that you were relying on other people as well. Although sport in general is tough I'd prefer to do things myself because you're in charge of your own destiny. Although they can back you up, team-mates can let you down too.

I prefer individual sport because you're only answerable to yourself.

Fishing is something I do in my spare time. I spend my money on fishing equipment and I try anything and everything - trout fishing, salmon fishing and coarse fishing. I'm not very good at it but I find it good to be involved in a sport that I'm not good at. I find that healthy because then I can equate to my amateur friends playing bad golf or whatever the case may be.

You have to find a sport that would be a leveller. Fishing is that one for me because in golfing terms, I'd be a 20-handicapper at fishing. I have low expectations. I do it for fun and I see it as fun, whereas any other sport I've played in the past I've been very competitive. Unless I competed to win I couldn't enjoy the sport. Fishing is something I enjoy even though I'm not good at it and that's what attracts me to it.

It's a fairly complex sport. If you go fishing and basically go in there blind you'll never catch one. But if you have expertise and you have the know-how, that's what makes it all come together for some people. I'm a learner at that sort of stuff and I enjoy learning it.

I've had good fun and good days out. If you catch a fish, that's a bonus. It's like a club golfer having a birdie. He can have a good day out but if he has a birdie it's a bonus. For me, it's a fish.

I've fished on and off all my life and it's something I enjoy doing when I'm home. I fish in the River Blackwater in Headfort quite a bit but I travel all around the country. I can go away and meet people and we can talk about fishing and they don't know me from Adam. We can just sit there for the day, try our hand at it and tell a few stories. It gets me away from what I normally do and I can sink into the background, fish away and be left to my own devices.

Because golf is such a big game now it's very hard to get away from it.

When I'm off the course people are wishing me well and asking am I available to do this, that and the other. So it's nice to get away from it and I find that's one place where I can disappear for a bit.

My children have started taking up a bit of golf and my young lad seems to be fanatical about it for the last couple of weeks. So I'll go out and caddy for them, stroll around, try and find their golf balls in the bushes and that sort of thing. They enjoy it and seem to get great fun out of it and the fun in golf for me when I'm at home is watching them playing.

Ninety-nine per cent of the country play golf just for the social side of things or to get out and get some exercise, but for me it's my job.

Their passion is my job so they want to talk to me all the time about what I do.

But at some point golf is work, it's not your passion. If it's going well it's very easy to be positive and enjoy it but when it's not going well all of a sudden golf turns into work. It means all players have to knuckle down and work hard on their game to iron out faults. The amateur just walks into the game and walks out of it, whereas for us it's a little bit different and certainly a lot more intense.