CHRIS Wood reckons he first beat his dad at golf when he was 11 or 12, but father will have none of it.

“I'm not going to admit to that!” Richard Wood chuckles when told of his son's version of events. “He was probably 14, by which time he was playing national junior golf.

“I could see it coming, and as it meant he was progressing, I was pleased. I already knew he was going to be better than me. He had had a single handicap from when he was 12, so it was just a matter of time.”

Structural engineer Richard, 52, has been playing consistently off a handicap of four for a dozen years.

But he's become used to being the second-best golfer in the family's Nailsea home as 20-year-old Chris has made his way through the amateur ranks – and after this month's Open Championship at Royal Birkdale, he knows that even his days as his son's caddy are nearing their end.

With father at his side, Chris was a sensation at the weather-lashed Open, tying fifth at 10 over par, seven strokes behind winner Padraig Harrington. His 290-stroke total was equalled by the American Jim Furyk, who won about £157,000.

Chris walked off with the top amateur's silver medal and nothing more – but that won't happen again, as he is turning professional by signing with the International Sports Management group this week.

So where will that leave dad?

“I always said that when he turned pro, I'd caddy for him for the first few events if he needed me,” says Richard, partner in a successful structural engineering company that specialises in stress analysis in the aircraft industry, and is deeply involved in the Airbus project.

“But he needs to make his own way in the world, and doesn't want his dad hanging around. He needs to get on the course away from his parents.

“Caddies aren't allowed in junior tournaments, but he was playing in men's competitions from when he was 15, so I started going round with him then. We did one at Henbury, early on, when we had an argument on a particular hole. We've never had a cross word since. He's the player, and now I say something only if he asks.

“Self-confidence is everything in golf. At the Open, he probably talked to me on about one shot in three. I had my say, and then it was up to him.

“My wife Sara's job and mine has been to be there doing what we thought best as parents – for Chris and for his sister Abi. If he hadn't wanted us to do what we've done, we wouldn't have done it. He's worked so hard, he's deserved everything we could possibly have helped with.

“That's included financial support, and we've been lucky not to have had to worry too much about that. The English Golf Union gives some help, but it doesn't add up to a whole season's support.”

Long before Chris started hitting the headlines, Richard had vivid memories of the day he first caught the golfing bug. “I took him up to Long Ashton, where I play, when he was about seven, but he wasn't interested,” he recalls. “But he came again one evening when he was about nine-and-a-half. We went down the first hole and got to the green – the first time he'd ever seen one. It was so green and lush and lovely, his eyes opened wide. They sparkled. That was the beginning of it all for Chris.”

The boy was in his mid-teens when Richard witnessed the second great landmark in his development as a golfer.

“From when he was 14 he was coached by Paul Mitchell, the pro at Bristol and Clifton,” he says. “One night Paul wanted to make an adjustment to his grip, but Chris didn't like the idea and was complaining.

“Paul said: 'You either do it or you don't do it, and you don't bother coming back any more'. That was the point when Chris changed to somebody completely and utterly focused on doing everything, whatever it took, to get to where he wanted to be.

“I remember it so clearly – a Thursday night at half-past four in the evening. Paul has been central to every aspect of Chris's game – not just his swing but his fitness, diet, attitude, everything. He's given so much to Chris, it's unbelievable.”

As long as he can remember, Chris has lived in a golf-mad household – at least as far as his dad is concerned. His mum Sara, from whom he has inherited his startling blue eyes and blond hair, is more of a tennis nut, though she also keeps fit through taking their Labrador Ollie for long walks and keeping the garden stunningly beautiful.

In comparison, Richard was late into the game. “I was brought up on the council estate at Henbury, and playing golf never entered the equation. But Henbury did have a golf course, and when I was about 10, a mate of mine told me you could go up and caddy there for half-a-crown (12.5p) a round.

“So off I went in my T-shirt and jeans, and eventually I was hired by this old lady, who seemed to me to be aged about 150. Every stroke she just bobbled the ball along the floor, and it took ages to get round.

“I didn't go near golf again for the best part of 20 years.

“When I was 17 or 18, my parents moved to Thornbury, and it was at that time I met Sara. I did part-time bar work at the Windbound, down by the Severn at Shepperdine, where the larger-than-life landlord Roger Savory ran live music events. She was there one night for a Christmas party with a Young Farmers' group from Shirehampton. We married in 1979, and it was her dad who first got me interested in golf.

“I began playing when I was 28 or 29, at Long Ashton. I started off with a 23 handicap, and got it down to 12 within a year. I just loved it and was passionate about it, practising all the time, having lessons and so on, and have been on a four handicap for 10 to 15 years. I wish I'd started as a youngster, but it wasn't to be.”

Richard's father, a former merchant seaman, worked in conditions of almost Dickensian filth: “He was at a factory in Avonmouth making carbon black for tyres. I went to see him there occasionally, and he was black. Outside, his car was covered in a film of soot. He was also a smoker, and died of emphysema at the age of 63.”

Richard left school at 16 for an engineering apprenticeship with a company at Ashton Gate, and gained a degree through part-time study. His career route was influenced by an early love of cars, which put his lifelong passion for sport on the back burner until golf came into his life.

He loved football as a boy, and so did Chris, who will be 21 in November.

“Anything to do with a ball, he was there,” says his dad. “He could catch a ball very early. He started playing football from five, when some dads organised a team for very young lads.

“When he was seven, Nailsea Juniors went all around town getting the best players, and Chris stayed with them until he was 14. He was a good centre-forward, scoring 120-odd goals and played for Woodspring as well as having a spell at Bristol City academy.

“When he first got playing golf, aged about 10, it was just before junior golf exploded with the Tiger Woods phenomenon. The first clubs he had were cut down. They were too heavy for him, but that's the way it was then.

“He started lessons with Mike Hart, the pro at Long Ashton, before going on to Paul Mitchell when he was 14.

“He was playing national junior golf when he was 13, in the national under-14 championship, and was anxious to get into the England set-up.

“But as a junior he was always on the fringes – and then, when he was 16 or 17, he started shooting up in height.

“His golf had been getting better and better, and then he started slipping back – and though it sounds crazy, being with him all the time, we didn't really realise what was going on.

“Then we measured him a couple of times, and discovered he'd grown four inches in three or four months. It seemed ridiculous. Someone said that if your eyes grow farther away from your hands and the ground, it takes a while to get your co-ordination right. Chris grew six inches in a year, and then another inch at 18 or 19 before he stopped at 6ft 5ins.”

He left Backwell School at 18 after A-levels and went to Bath University to do a sports degree. “After two days, he came home and said 'It's not for me, it will get in the way of my golf too much',” says Richard.

“So we said fine, though we think you ought to get a part-time job, which he did that winter. But when spring came and the season started, he concentrated on golf full-time and has been doing so ever since. He's been selected for everything going at top amateur level, and has played all around the world.

“It's a busy, tiring, time-consuming life. You can't possibly do it and have a job.”

Chris declines to talk about his parents in front of them, but in a quiet corner of mum's garden confides: “The financial support has only been a part of it. It's so much more than that, and they've been great when things have not been going well.

“They're similar people, very down to earth. They've kept my feet on the ground – especially since the Open! They're really good people to go to for advice, on whatever it might be, and that's really shown through when I've been making my decision about going pro.”

In truth, in the whirlwind that has hit the household since the Open, Chris seems to be taking it all more calmly than anyone. The successful young professional sportsman's polite, smiling but essentially guarded public persona is already in place. It's his dad who tells of the two of them walking through Broadmead and three sets of strangers stepping up to pass on their congratulations. It's his mum who marvels at all the cards and letters flooding in from people who don't even know Chris – unconsciously bringing to mind the sudden public acclaim dreamed of by Glen Campbell's would-be Rhinestone Cowboy.

Even Ollie the Labrador can tell the difference, with ever more visitors passing through to admire his string of plastic sausages, of which he is understandably proud, and maybe slip him a chocolate biscuit when mum and dad aren't looking.

Indeed, if anyone's cooler about it than Chris himself it's his arty big sister Abi, who's currently on her travels around Europe. “Have you started in that Open thingy yet?” she famously texted her kid bro when his name was already being plastered all over the back pages. What a story they'll have for her when she gets home...