By Neil Silver, PA Sport

Probably Ben Curtis' biggest claim to golfing fame before Sunday's sensational Open triumph was the fact that the American town in which he was born - Ostrander in Ohio - is near to Columbus, where legendary figure Jack Nicklaus grew up.

The house in which Curtis grew up was only 50 yards from the practice putting green of Millcreek Golf Course, which his grandfather built and where his father remains as the superintendent.

"Everything was right there at my fingertips," said Curtis. "There was everything I ever needed and I could play almost any time."

Curtis started playing golf at the tender age of three, but did not get serious about the sport until he was in high school, and he won the Division II state title in his junior and senior years of high school.

It is ironic with the Open being staged in Sandwich that the 26-year-old rookie lives in Kent. However, his home is Kent in Ohio, not the county in the south-east of England.

The 2003 Open at Royal St George's was the first "major" championship of Curtis' fledgling career, yet he held off the challenge of some of the game's great players in the final round, including world number one Tiger Woods, Thomas Bjorn of Denmark, overnight leader and fellow American Davis Love, and Fiji's Vijay Singh.

In fact, the Open is only Curtis' 16th career Tour event and his 14th of the 2003 season. He played in just one event in 2000 in which he missed the cut, and one again in 2001, this time making it through to the third and fourth rounds.

Curtis qualified for the PGA Tour last year in his third attempt with rounds of 69-70-72-69-68-75 to finish 26th among 38 qualifiers. Two years ago he did make the finals but missed out on his Tour card.

Last year on the NGA Hooters Pro Golf Tour he had one victory, at Myrtle Beach, and finished 10th in the money list.

His biggest thrill before this came during his time as an amateur, when he won the 2000 US Amateur World Team competition in Germany, and also before turning professional Curtis was the three-time Ohio Amateur Champion.

When he won the Ohio Amateur in 1999 and then again in 2000, by 17 strokes, he joined the PGA Tour's John Cook and Arnold Palmer as the tournament's only back-to-back winners. That same year he finished runner-up at the Western Amateur and won the Player's Amateur to become the number one ranked amateur golfer in the world by Golfweek magazine.

So little was known about Curtis coming into the biggest tournament in the world - for which he qualified by finishing joint-13th at the 100th Western Open last month - that his entry in the official players' guide is one of the shortest in the book.

All that is about to change overnight, as Ben Curtis gets set to dominate the golfing headlines in the coming week.