By Mark Garrod, PA Sport Golf Correspondent

Thomas Bjorn prepared himself for "a tough few days" on Sunday night as he talked about the Open that got away.

The 32-year-old Dane was poised to become Europe's first major winner since Paul Lawrie in 1999 when he led by three with four holes to play at Sandwich.

"On the 15th today I had one hand on the trophy and I let it go," Bjorn admitted.

He bogeyed the 15th after driving into sand and then needed three attempts to get out of a greenside bunker on the short 16th and double-bogeyed.

Level with American Ben Curtis as a result, Bjorn then dropped another shot at the 17th, missing a five-foot putt, and could not birdie the last to force a play-off.

"Obviously I'm disappointed," he said. "I thought I did a lot of right things. The 15th was probably more of a key than anything, but 16 was a couple of poor bunker shots at the wrong time.

"I thought I deserved a little bit more than I got and it's going to be a tough few days.

"At the 16th I just got caught on the wind a bit. Just a couple more yards left it would have gone to three feet.

"I had my good breaks and had a bad one there. But you live with it and go on. I know now I'm on my way back and I feel I have majors in me."

In his first round Bjorn took a quadruple-bogey eight on the 17th, incurring a two-stroke penalty for hitting the sand in a bunker after failing to get out of it there as well.

Without that he would have won, of course, but he said: "You can't look back on that and say it cost me.

"Hopefully a major will come my way soon. A lot of good players have lost majors. You get yourself there in contention time and time again and the more you're in there the bigger the chance of winning.

"But sometimes somebody wins one out of the blue."

That applied to Curtis more than it has to any major champion in the past half-century at least.