Crocked Simon Dyson plots KLM title defence (From York Press)

Crocked Simon Dyson plots KLM title defence

11:40am Wednesday 5th September 2012 in Sport By Tony Kelly, Deputy sports editor

CLUB class Simon Dyson will have to hurdle the pain barrier if he is to enter the European Tour record-books.

The York-born ace competes in the 1.8 million euro KLM Open tomorrow as defending champion and a member of an exclusive group.

Only Dyson, the late and great Seve Ballesteros and major winner Bernhard Langer, have won three Dutch Open championships.

Dyson first won the KLM trophy in 2006 and again in 2009, both at the Kennemer course. Then last year he was again the Dutch master when he triumphed by one shot from compatriot David Lynn when it was staged at tomorrow’s venue, the Hilversumsche Golf Club in Hilversum.

It’s a course he likes declaring: “I’m looking forward to going back.

“Whenever you have played well somewhere, you always get a good vibe when you go back and that is certainly the case with Holland for me. Those last six holes at Hilversumsche really suit my eye, so hopefully I can have another strong finish.”

However, the 34-year-old Dyson goes into the defence of his KLM crown nursing a troublesome wrist injury sustained two tournaments back in the Johnnie Walker Championships in Gleneagles.

Attempting to get the ball out of rough on the second hole in the first round at Gleneagles Dyson badly jarred his wrist.

It troubled him too all the way through last week’s Omega European Masters in Switzerland, where he finished tied for 27th.

A visit to a specialist in Leeds on Monday revealed he had torn a ligament in the wrist. But due to defending his crown in Holland, and also the fact he faces a three-week break after the KLM, when he asked the specialist could he play, he was told he could.

So Dyson, now ranked 48th in the world, will bid to become the first man in European Tour history to win the KLM Open championship for the fourth time.

If he does prevail for his seventh title success, it would fittingly crown the centenary of the event which was first won by an Englishman, George Pannell in 1912.

Dyson’s wrist injury follows on from a near five-week absence he endured in the middle third of the season when he was diagnosed with a serious pelvic injury.

But he refused to blame his latest rap on the dropping of four shots in five holes at the turn of the Crans-sur-Sierre course which undermined his drive for a top-ten finish in Switzerland last week.

Dyson said though his strapped-up wrist hurt, it was much improved from the initial blow received at Gleneagles.