Success breeds success. For 44 years Spain waited for a major football trophy. For 42 years Spain had waited for a Wimbledon champion. On consecutive Sundays this sporting summer has turned Spanish.

What next? Which matador will be next to take his place alongside Rafael Nadal, Cesc Fabregas, Fernando Torres and the rest?

The Spanish football team are young and powerful, full of running, full of excitement. Nadal is a new force in men’s tennis: never before has such peerless shot-making been harnessed so wondrously to muscle and athleticism.

All of which makes a cigar-chomping, red-wine loving, ponytailed 40-something an unlikely candidate to join the pantheon of current Spanish legends. But Miguel Angel Jimenez, born in the year Spain last won a football tournament, has as good a claim to be the next Open champion as anyone in these Tiger-less times.

Seve is long gone. Jose Maria Olazabal is trying, for the second time, to overcome the sort of injury and health problems that would finish most golfers. Sergio Garcia is still there, of course, excitable, capable of moments of madness, sustained by flashes of true genius. But Sergio won’t win this Open.

Success at the Players’ Championship is welcome. It doesn’t, however, make up for the disaster of Carnoustie last year. When Sergio tees up at Birkdale, it will be the play-off defeat to Padraig Harrington, not the play-off victory over Paul Goydos, that stampedes through his mind.

Which leads us to the distinctly unexcitable figure of Jimenez, the man from Malaga who likes to fix cars and is called The Mechanic. The man who turned pro 26 years ago and has held a European Tour card for two decades. The man who, when asked what he required to make his Ryder Cup experience comfortable, replied “good cigars and good red wine.” The man who knew there was more chance of Nick Faldo choosing Peter Alliss for this year’s Ryder Cup, so simply went about qualifying automatically and succeeded with months to spare.

And, by playing himself into the Ryder Cup, he has also turned himself into one of the world’s form players in 2008. Top-ten finishes at both The Masters and US Open in 2008 are not to be sniffed at. Only Tiger has a better record in this year’s big ones. His victory in the BMW PGA Championship proved that he can win big when the pressure is on.

Unlike his young Spanish colleague, Garcia, Jimenez is a man unlikely to become distracted at the Open. He’s low key, phlegmatic, contented. He loves playing good golf and just wants to keep his head down and get on it. In the hurly-burly of an Open, especially if the weather is unkind, that is the kind of temperament that reaps rewards.

 Jimenez might not be a fashionable winner at Royal Birkdale. But, for those of us who follow golf, he would be an immensely popular one.