Camilo Villegas is hoped to be the fore-runner of players from developing golfing nations performing at the highest level.

The 26-year-old made a spirited bid at Royal Birkdale and shot to prominence with a second-round 65, the best of the tournament, a gratifying performance for the R&A as he is a product of one of their development programmes funded by profits from golf's oldest major championship.

Colombia is one of more than 80 countries in which the R&A invest almost half of their annual profits of around £10m.

Peter Dawson, chief executive of the R&A, said yesterday: "There are two important aspects of golf development. One is to push from the bottom with grass-roots financing, and the other is to have stars from that country to whom people can aspire.

"Camilo is certainly one of those as far as Colombia is concerned, and it's good to see, but he is just one example of what we hope will be a bigger trend."

Colombia is a football-mad nation, but the success of Villegas is having a big effect with Colombian TV now regularly picking up PGA Tour broadcasts and interest growing beyond around 50 clubs in the country.

Villegas, in his third year on the PGA Tour, slipped back to joint 39th and won £16,600.

Despite poor weather for much of the championship and the absence of world No.1 Tiger Woods, there was an overall attendance of 201,500, a rise of 9000 from the total at the same venue 10 years ago.

Dawson said: "It demonstrates once again that the north-west of England is starved of major golf events and is as strong as Scotland and Ireland. There is huge potential and the local authorities have now started to recognise that."

Televison viewing figures are expected later this week, but Dawson said that on Thursday, when the weather was at its worst, indications from the BBC were that the audience was up 20% from last year at Carnoustie.