KIETH DUGGAN/Sideline Cut: Hence the sister-tag of choker or slacker, the barbs that are thrown at athletes like Phil Mickelson. In a couple of year's time, they will be fired at Tim Henman at Wimbledon, especially if he keeps flirting with the act of winning. The loser syndrome appears to have engulfed Colin Montgomerie and is descending like a cloud over the Jordan F1 team. If you are going to come close to winning, then you had better see it though or else prepare to feel the wrath.

'Loser' is the most loathed and popular insult in contemporary America. It is the ultimate put-down in that it is unequivocal and negates for the accused the possibility of any emancipation from the perpetual state of losing. You are a loser. Pick any American television show any day of the week and there is a fair chance some WASPish girl will complain to her friend that a designated WASPish guy is a loser. To emphasise the point, it may be noted he is SUCH a loser. Or a buff and shiny WASPish male will fire a disdainful "loser" at another male character who can have no comeback. Because by voicing it, it becomes fact. Or a WASPish male may confide to other characters or to his audience that he has realised, with horror, that he is, always has been and most likely always will be a loser.

The losing thing is almost entirely a male phenomenon. It is a dual-edged affront because when someone recognises in another the shortcomings that combine to render him one of the world's losers, that someone is implicitly suggesting a distance between the loser's role in life and his/her own, which is solely concerned with the fact of winning.

Winning is an altogether different phenomenon. You never hear of someone being explicitly described as a "winner". That state of being speaks for itself. To desire being labelled a winner is to risk being written off as a loser. People who habitually win don't require any verbal definitions of what they are because it is quite clear and self -evident. They are number one. The best.

There is only one way to win but a million different ways to lose. But if the world of sports is anything to go by, the most resented form of loser is the kind who could, in different circumstances or with better karma, become a genuine all-out winner. Colin Montgomerie, in other words. Or footballers who play for Chelsea. Or Argentina's World Cup squad. Or Tim Henman. Or Anna Kournikova. Or Jimmy White. And David Ginola. Especially Ginola.

These athletes are no different than the vast majority of the other astonishingly well-paid sports people who go through a lifetime of competition rarely, and sometimes never, actually winning. Except for the fact that they aspire to be - or behave as if they are - champions. It is fine to remain an anonymous and respectful member of the vast army of losers in all walks of life.

Professional soccer, golf, tennis, boxing, snooker, any sport you may care to mention, is made up primarily of people who have resigned themselves from a very young age to the fact they will probably never fully win. Sure, there will be plenty of small victories along the way over opponents who have reconciled themselves to an existence which involves losing more frequently and heavily, but those are just small consolations on the way to ultimate loss.

It is fine to lose like Leicester or Warren Barton or Greg Rusedski. It is okay to fall down honestly and modestly and to say thanks and take the cheque. There is safety in losing with the crowd, when everyone knows there is no hope of ever fully winning.

But what we cannot tolerate are those who lose despite us seeing them as winners because that represents a betrayal of our judgement and boomerangs the loser tag back onto us. You have to be a loser to pick a loser to win. But there has to be a rider, a get-out clause to explain away the fact that we, who have no truck with losers and dine only at winning tables, backed a big L.

The loser syndrome may have been popularised in America but it has definitely taken hold in this country. Although the Roy Keane/Mick McCarthy showdown was widely portrayed as an empirical clash between the philosophy of winning and the tradition of just taking part, it was never that clear cut. It became vital to both men not to finish the dispute as the perceived loser and debate still rages as to whom that tag belongs.

Because although they are worlds apart in terms of their approach to their chosen sport, both are acutely aware of the stigma that being a loser carries. It suggests that you can't cut it, that you are lacking something, that you are in some way hollow.

It is, of course, unfair and terrible and a reflection not on the supposed loser but on those who would label him that.

The point about those that we brand losers is that they are generally way more interesting than life's serial winners. People got more excited at Tiger Woods shooting a horrible round of golf at Muirfield than they would have had he shot another superlative round to set himself up for yet another Major. Woods' frailty brought people who always lose at golf, who spend endless time and money just trying to become bad at the game, that bit closer to the Tiger on Saturday evening.

They - you, me - felt like less like losers.

The quicker we resign ourselves to the fact that in the end, we have to lose, the happier we are going to be.

When Pete Sampras was winning titles for fun, do you think he ever imagined that he would sit on a chair in Wimbledon, having been beaten by a professional loser, reading and re-reading that letter from his wife? But the funny thing about that gesture was it made people talk about Sampras in a more animated way than they ever did when he was swatting the non-winners away for years.

That day lies ahead of Tiger Woods also. And for Michael Schumacher and Shaquille O'Neal and Lance Armstrong.

Eventually, it happens. This evening in Thurles, two of Ireland's greatest winners, Mick O'Dwyer and Páidí Ó Sé will pit their wits against one another. These are men that changed the borders of our imagination with regards to winning in the 1970s and '80s. What they did won't be repeated.

But look at them here and now. All those previous wins count for nothing. They are still obsessed with the same thing and it's not about winning. It's about trying not to lose.