PGA CHAMPIONSHIP: THE TOUR'S flagship title it may be, but the winning of the BMW PGA Championship over the famed Burma Road course yesterday was a bit like handling a hot potato.

In the end, destiny, or perhaps experience, decreed that Miguel Angel Jimenez, the cigar-chomping, pony-tailed antithesis to the clotheshorse athletes who dominate the fairways these days, would prevail, albeit only after a play-off with England's Oliver Wilson.

On a strange old day in the leafy estate that the rich and famous call home, Sweden's Robert Karlsson had gone to the first tee with a swagger and a four-shot lead, only to become the latest player to be rebuked. But Señor Jimenez, who included a hole-in-one on the fifth in a closing 68 for 277, 11-under-par, claimed the biggest win of his career. You can be sure the finest Rioja was uncorked, and the finest Cuban cigars unwrapped, in celebration last night. He deserved them.

What is it about this West Course, a heavenly place with devilish inclination, which torments so many souls? Just as Paul McGinley had endured a nightmare on Saturday, yesterday it was Karlsson's turn to be left wondering why the golfing gods cause such suffering.

Having seen his lead dwindle and then disintegrate, Karlsson battled away and had a six-foot birdie putt on the 18th to force his way into the play-off with Jimenez and Wilson. Instead, he three-putted for bogey - and a 74 - to slip into a tie with Luke Donald for third, two shots adrift of the magic mark.

So Jimenez and Wilson - who had experienced their own travails coming down the stretch - got to go toe-to-toe.

In regulation play, each had shot 68s, and each had covered the front nine in just 31 strokes, although by different routes: the Spaniard covered the stretch from the third in birdie-birdie-eagle-par-birdie-bogey-par, while the Englishman, without dropping a shot, rolled in four birdies.

Birdies were to prove harder to find on the stretch home. Jimenez claimed just one, on the 12th, and gave the shot back to the course with a bogey on the 15th when he missed a 12-inch putt, while Wilson had two birdies and two bogeys.

His second bogey came on the 17th, at which point he was alone in the lead. There, Wilson pushed his drive into a holly bush and had to take what proved to be a costly penalty drop.

"Missing that little putt was like getting a knife in the heart," said Jimenez, but he recovered his focus to cover the final three holes in pars to join Wilson - a player now with seven runner-up finishes and still chasing his first win - on 11 under.

After they halved the first play-off hole, the long 18th, in pars, it was back to the tee . . . and the second time of asking was to prove decisive.

When Wilson pushed his drive into the rough, which left him with no chance of going for the green, Jimenez's radar-like accuracy off the tee to the middle of the fairway gave him the advantage.

Sure enough, Jimenez found the green with a three-wood and, after Wilson missed his 15-foot birdie attempt, it was left to Jimenez - who had rolled his eagle putt 18 inches past the hole - to finish off the job.

It was the 15th win of his career and his second of the season, having won the Hong Kong Open last November.

The €750,000 winner's cheque brought Jimenez to over €13 million in career earnings. The win also moved the Spaniard to the top of the European Tour order of merit.

McGinley's woes over the weekend left him bruised and battered. "I'm shattered," he admitted, "and I'm going to have to sit down and analyse just what went wrong."

On Friday evening the Dubliner left Wentworth with a four-shot lead and a record low 36-hole total. By last evening, he had sunk to tied-10th after a 79 on Saturday was followed by a 72.

"I didn't want to analyse what went wrong after the third round, because I knew I was still in the tournament. I thought if I could get out of the blocks fast I could still win," said McGinley.

Yet, when he got to the range yesterday, he still felt "shell-shocked" from Saturday. "I was hitting it dreadful on the range and knew it was going to be a real battle."

His foreboding was to prove too accurate, and you figure the self-analysis won't be short or easy.

Despite a birdie at the third yesterday, the fast start he cherished never materialised. The birdies that had come so easily in the first two rounds proved elusive, and bogeys on the eighth and 13th - at which he dropped back to five-under and 16th position - meant he became little more than a bit player, a far cry from his crusading play on Thursday and Friday.

McGinley did manage to find a birdie on the 16th, which at least got him back into the top-10, but he only managed pars at the finishing two par fives. The 18th was a scrambled par, as his fairway approach clattered into the trees and dropped into a bunker, from where he proceeded to airmail the green into another trap.

However, he got up and down for a par that gave him his fourth top-10 finish of the season.

Yet, in the bigger scheme, that was poor consolation for the way he had started the tournament and reach the midway stage seemingly in control of his destiny.

"Hard questions were asked and I didn't have the answers," he said.