Big Denis O'Sullivan is hoping to come home in style and win next week's £250,000 AIB Irish Seniors Open at Powerscourt.

But only four years ago the 53-year old was on the scrapheap of Irish amateur golf.

After an international career spanning 16 years, O'Sullivan was told his amateur career was effectively over.

But the Corkman refused to accept that his best days were behind him and now he's showing the critics that they were wrong to write him off as a contender by taking the European Seniors Tour by storm.

Two wins last year - in the Senior Tournament of Champions and the end-of-season Abu Dhabi Seniors Tour Championship - saw him finish third in the 2000 Senior Order of Merit with winnings of over £90,000 sterling.

And he's determined to boost his career earnings to over £200,000 this week by snatching his home tournament in picturesque County Wicklow.

"Oh yes, I'd really love to win at Powerscourt," he said this week. "I want to be number one in Europe and that means winning tournaments. But I have a few other ambitons too."

It's certainly a huge change from the situation in 1991, when O'Sullivan's amateur career came to an abrupt end.

Winner of the Irish Close Amateur Championship in 1985 and the East of Ireland Championship in 1990, O'Sullivan was far from a spent force in 1991 and he's still bitter.

"I felt I still had a lot of golf left in me," he said. "I still wanted to play but I was 41 years of age and in this country they write you off in golf when you're in your thirties, so it was frustrating."

O'Sullivan went on to become an Ireland selector but he threw in the towel in frustration at the lack of change at the top in a domestic scene that he reckons is run "by alickadoos for alickadoos."

"I was bored," he said this week. "They weren't taking notice of what I wanted and what I wanted was to pick the best Ireland team. All they (the other selectors) were interested in was picking their friends."

Not a man to sit still, O'Sullivan decided he wanted to give something back to Irish golf and went to the European Senior Tour qualifying school in 1997, securing his card.

"I knew it was the end of my amateur career once I teed it up in the School, but it was something I had always dreamed of doing and I didn't want to have any regrets in life later on."

All of a sudden he was rubbing shoulders with hardened campaigners like Tommy Horton, Neil Coles and Brian Barnes, and playing with legends of the stature of Bob Charles or Gary Player.

"It's just fantastic being out there with guys I had paid to go and see play or guys I had watched on TV, like Bernard Hunt and Ian Stanley. There's a fantastic family atmosphere in Europe

"In the States it's dog eat dog and they don't want to see Europeans coming in and taking their money, but in Europe it's tough on the course and great afterwards where you can have a drink and a bit of a laugh with great people."

It's certainly a huge contrast to the highly insular US Senior Tour, a scene that doesn't take kindly to foreign raiders.

O'Sullivan found that out the hard way. Last November he failed in his bid to win a US Senior Tour card after spending over £8,000 in a month-long trip that took him through pre-qualifying and what he called a "very nasty" experience at the final qualifying school.

"I played terriblly in the first roudn of final qualifying and didn't get my card but the Americans were just horrible and made me feel so unwelcome on that first tee that I was problably more worried about them than I was about my own game," he recalled.

But it's been a huge learning experience for O'Sullivan who will only play on the US Senior Tour if he an go back in style as Europe's number one senior.

"I won't try and pre-qualify again. I'm aiming to be number one in Europe and that will get me in over there. Other that that I'll be back over there later this month for the US Senior PGA Championship at in Paramus, New Jersey, which I'm really looking forward to."

Meanwhile, the European Senior Tour continues to blossom and three years down the road, O'Sullivan has banked over £170,000 in prize-money.

Yet despite his financial success, the Leesider still works for the Leasing Company of Ireland as a salesman when the Tour is not in full swing.

"I haven't been a professional golfer all my life so I never dedicated my entire day to golf and I can't start doing it now," he revealed. "The Tour runs from April to October and in between it's nice for me to get into the office for four or five hours a day. I really enjoy working and when you take away £40,000 expenses and 48 percent tax out of £91,000 there's not the kind of money that people might think you're making."

A win in next week's Irish Senior Open event would cover a year's tour expenses almost to the penny exactly, and in the absence of the injured Christy O'Connor Jnr and David Jones, O'Sullivan will be one of the home favourites for an event he would dearly love to win.

He showed his determation to finish well by playing a practice round at the County Wicklow venue in January.

"Wherever they place the tees, it's certain to be a tough course - not a place for short-hitters," he said. "And I was delighted with the condition of the greens."

O'Sullivan's career reached its high point last season when he captured the Senior Tournament of Champions and the end-of-season Abu Dhabi Seniors Tour Championship.

"Winning a golf tournament is a feeling that you just can't beat," he said. "It's addictive and I'm really looking forward to doing it again."

An incredible 25 under-par for those two final tournaments last season, O'Sullivan appears to have carried that impressive form into the 2001 season with a sixth place finish in the season opener, the Royal Westmoreland Barbados Open.

"Yes, I'm playing very nicely thank," he said ominously. "If the putter is working, who knows."

Big in Japan

Darren Clarke headed East and won the Chunichi Crowns event recently. But he isn't the first Irishman to make it big in the 'Land of the Rising Sun'.

Rosses Point native Jude O'Reilly has made a huge impression on Japanese tour star Shigeki Maruyama and now caddies for him fulltime.

A President's Cup player, Maruyama shot to fame last year when he fired a sensational 13-under-par 58 in the US Open qualifying last season.

O'Reilly's mother, Gretta, is a former lady captain at Co Sligo while Jude spent several season on the Japanese tour before accepting a job with Maruyama.