Fore - man overboard!

It is 10 years since James McCarthy lost his remaining keepsake from the 2007 US Open. And it happened in highly dramatic circumstances when he was being rescued from near-death in freezing Alaskan waters. Here might have been a real-live episode of the TV series, Deadliest Catch, with a Corkman centre stage.

The native of Ringaskiddy was swept overboard in 2013, while fishing in the Gulf of Alaska. Fortunately, his brother Peter managed to haul him to safety after a 20-minute battle for survival which culminated in an air-lift to hospital. Later, in emphasising the importance of golf in his life, he recalled to his sister, Katrina, during a phone call to Cork, an interview he had done with me.

After a two-year flirtation with professional golf while based in Las Vegas, McCarthy drove 3,700 miles to Kodiak, Alaska in 2005 to join Peter, deep-sea fishing. Two years later, he was contacted by US Open qualifier, Michael Berg, a former colleague on the minitours, asking him to caddie at Oakmont. That’s where he told me his fascinating story.

I learned that there were three fishing McCarthys in Alaska, Peter, James and John 'just like the apostles,’ James remarked with a smile. When asked if their work resembled the TV series Deadliest Catch about Alaskan crab fishermen in the Bering Sea, he replied: ‘Yeah, we're pretty close to that stuff, except our boats are half the size. It's tough, especially in winter. Freezing. Bleak.’

According to Katrina, his rescue led to a stay in hospital where he had to recover from lung damage. In the process, he had to part with his remaining memento from the US Open, when a logoed T-shirt was cut from his body. In November 2005, McCarthy reluctantly accepted that he would have to call an end to a two-year flirtation with professional golf. So it was that with his dog Murphy by his side, he left the bright lights of Las Vegas and headed for decidedly chillier climes to resume a hazardous life, deep-sea fishing in Kodiak, Alaska.

The mini golf tours had been good, but he had dreamed of bigger things. There had been two, failed attempts at local qualifying for the US Open but with a third apparently out of the question, everything changed. After a phone call from a former tournament colleague, he was bound for Oakmont, Pennsylvania. He would live his US Open dream, walking inside the ropes, though instead of swinging clubs, he would be carrying a bag of them as Berg's caddie. Memories of teenage golf at Rafeen Creek in Cork, might well have been from another world.

‘I remember that drive from Vegas,’ he mused, as we talked under a burning