You look at him and wonder why the gods laughed down on him, why they pelted him with arrows and turned him into a cartoon character.

Why?

You look into his eyes and all you see is a sincerity that is absent from so many other professional sportsmen. Why Jean Van de Velde? Why didn't fate inflict hurt on some stony-faced, self-centred golfer? Why did they transform a journeyman professional into a figure of ridicule?

He didn't deserve what happened to him at Carnoustie a year ago; we all know that. He didn't need the world to wonder why a Frenchman - with his trousers rolled up to his knees - should be standing in a Scottish creek with the dusk closing in on a Sunday evening and a scrum of zealous press photographers threatening to fall into the burn beside him.

Twelve months on, you look at Jean Van de Velde and you know he has survived. The almost comical, but tremendously sad, images of his antics on the 72nd hole of a year ago are replaced with those of a man whose life has moved on.

"Do you suspect, Jean, you would be less famous if you had won?" an American hack asks the victim of Carnoustie. How do you answer that one? What do you say? We're told from the time we're knee high that nobody remembers who finishes second. If anything, Van de Velde has buried that old chestnut.

Van de Velde has accepted his fate, but wishes it had been different. "I suspect I would be more famous if I win this year, but I can't answer that question really. It is a bit hard to say. I did not win, so . . ." His words tail off and a hint of regret hangs in the air.

Yesterday morning, just after seven o'clock, Van de Velde played a practice round on the Old Course - along with Colin Montgomerie and Steve Jones - and later confronted the world's media. For the thousandth time in a year, the talk was all of Carnoustie and what might have been.

Van de Velde expects that people will want to talk about what happened him on that last hole (when his two-iron approach rebounded back off the greenside grandstand and he ended up with a triple bogey seven) for "another nine years". He doesn't mind talking about it, but he has only watched his escapades twice on video and, for him, things have moved on.

This week, he's an outsider again. But, hey, what's new? "Hopefully, we are going to find a few snakes in the bag, make some long putts," he says. "You start making a 60-footer, and you kind of breathe a little bit."

Van de Velde could do with a change of luck, that's for sure. But if he is thinking of stepping into the Swilken Burn to play a shot, perhaps he could take some advice from someone who has been there, done that. A few years back, in the Dunhill Cup, Christy O'Connor Jnr attempted to play a shot from the brook in his match with Tom Kite. "Tell Jean not to attempt it," jokes Christy, "unless the ball is exactly in the middle."

His observation stems from comments which John Paramour, chief referee with the European Tour, gave to him on the quiet after his endeavours in the burn. "John told me that I'd incurred a number of penalty strokes because I hit the bank so often on my practice swings," he recalls.

At this stage, you'd imagine Van de Velde is well-warned.