Many heartfelt words will by now have been written in tribute to the deep and abiding kinship harboured by the late Payne Stewart for Ireland, for Irish golf and for the Irish people, but a brief episode earlier this summer remains unchronicled. Of this I am confident, because there were only two witnesses, and one of them is no longer with us.

For the past four years I have chaired a golf tournament at my home club outside Boston to benefit Our Lady's Hospital for Sick Children in Crumlin, Dublin. The proceeds of this event are substantially augmented by an auction conducted in conjunction with the awards dinner. Over the years, a pin flag from a Major championship, signed by the winner, has been demonstrated to be a consistently popular item, and since I am the one with presumed access to said champions, it has fallen unto my lot to secure the signatures.

I had two Pinehurst flags - one for our event, another to be donated to the golf classic Eamonn Coghlan runs at Luttrellstown Castle each June to benefit the same hospital - in my possession at the conclusion of this year's US Open, but in the clamour that reigned following Stewart's third Major win, the opportunity for a private moment never presented itself, and the flags went for the moment unsigned. Not a big deal, I thought. I've got nearly nine months to take care of this.

After the Luttrellstown Castle event the following week, however, the matter acquired some urgency. Undeterred by my failure to secure the signatures, Eamonn Coghlan auctioned off a Pinehurst flag signed by Payne Stewart for, I believe, £1,000 - on the promise that it would be delivered immediately after the British Open.

Under normal circumstances this would have presented no problems. But the events surrounding the baseball All Star game delayed my arrival in Carnoustie until the morning the championship began, and, by the time I got to the course on Thursday, Stewart had already finished his round, completed his interviews, and helicoptered his way back to St Andrews, where he was staying.

On Friday afternoon, I was waiting near the 18th green as Payne completed his round. Circumstances did not augur well for my mission. Having bogeyed the last two holes, the US Open champion was not only likely to be in ill humour, but it momentarily appeared that he might be in danger of missing the cut. Under these grim circumstances almost any other golfer would have been unapproachable.

After putting out, Stewart first visited the scorer's cabin to sign his card, and then endured a couple of television interviews after he emerged. When he had finished, he saw me there waiting.

"What do you want?" he asked in mock disgust.

I told him that I needed a favour and did my best to briefly explain the situation.

"Where are the flags now?" he asked.

"Right here in my briefcase," I told him.

"Come on," he said, casting a nervous eye toward the dozens of autograph-seekers lining the path to the clubhouse. "Bring them down to the locker-room and let's do it right now."

Given the circumstances, many a golfer might at that moment have been smashing clubs against the wall, and others would have sought refuge in the physio's trailer or the players' lounge, which are off-limits to the press. But as Payne Stewart spread the flags on a table in the Carnoustie locker-room and signed his name, he wanted to know about the hospital and the charity tournament.

"How have you done so far?" he asked.

I told him that we'd managed to donate over $100,000 to Our Lady's Hospital over the four years.

"Wow," he smiled. "That's great."

William Payne Stewart was never what you'd call a hell-raiser, but earlier in his career, prior to the spiritual phase which accompanied his later successes, he indulged his fondness for both cigars and cigarettes.

Later on, he became a spokesman warning kids off tobacco, but those of us in this business knew that he hadn't really quit smoking, he'd merely stopped buying. If you chose to follow him out of the press tent at the conclusion of a post-round interview session hoping for a more private chat, he was usually amenable, but at a price: he'd want to bum a cigarette.

He won two US Opens and one PGA Championship, but, to my mind, it is his comportment throughout last month's Ryder Cup which will remain his lasting legacy. At one point during his final-day match against Colin Montgomerie, one of the Brookline hecklers bellowed in the midst of Monty's backswing. Stewart, who was waiting to play his own shot, came racing across the fairway and stood at the edge of the ropes.

"Who said that?" he demanded, and after several members of the gallery pointed out the offender, Stewart told the fellow: "Get out of here! We don't need your kind around here."

He stood there until he was satisfied that the marshals had taken the miscreant into custody.

On several other occasions that day Stewart implored the crowd for civility in its treatment of Montgomerie. At the final hole, he probably could have halved his match with the European number one, or even won it had Monty three-putted, but instead he conceded a 30-foot putt and went into the record books as a loser in the singles match. In fact, he was the biggest winner of the day.

"I looked at Mike (Hicks, his caddie) and said, `I'm not going to make him putt this'," Stewart recalled later that day. "My individual statistics don't mean crap out here, and we'd already won the Ryder Cup. I wasn't going to put him through that. It wasn't necessary."

The gesture was very much in keeping with the tradition of the event. In the first Ryder Cup at Worcester, in 1927, with the matches safely in hand, Gene Sarazen intentionally three-putted the final hole to halve his singles game against Charles Whitcombe, and of course at Birkdale in 1969 Jack Nicklaus famously conceded Tony Jacklin's missable putt to produce a drawn result.

A self-described "rah-rah guy", Payne Stewart was probably more responsible than anyone for instilling the patriotic unity which brought the Americans back from the brink of defeat at Brookline, but no one was more embarrassed than he when that team spirit spilled over into runaway emotionalism and the disrespectful demonstrations that ensued that afternoon.

"That," he sighed, "is not what this event is about."

Eamonn Coghlan, by the way, got his Pinehurst flag, and delivered it to its new owner the week after the British Open. I still have the other. It is now priceless.