No one gives Hunter Mahan a shot at winning the British Open, but that's fine with him. Scott Halleran/Getty Images

Everyone knows that Justin Leonard returns to Scotland this week as the last man to kiss the Claret Jug at Royal Troon. But few realize he's brought along a doppelganger.

Hunter Mahan is Leonard's Gen-X shadow-self. He arrived at Troon on Monday in circumstances eerily similar to those surrounding Leonard when the 1997 Open champion-to-be alit on the shores of Caledonia seven years ago.

Leonard, at the time, was a Texan in his early 20s. So is Mahan. Leonard's caddie was salty Tour veteran Bob Riefke. Mahan employs the same guy. Swing coach? Again, one in the same person, Randy Smith of Dallas's Royal Oaks CC. Indeed, Smith spent last week almost exactly the same way he spent the week before the 1997: squatting three feet in front of his pupil and holding an obstacle three feet off the ground (with Leonard, a length of rope; with Mahan, a five-iron), encouraging the low ball-flight necessary to negotiate the windswept linksland.

Sure, there are differences. Leonard, a 1994 University of Texas grad, dresses like a resort-wear model, and looks like he's never gone a week without a haircut. Mahan, 22, who left Oklahoma State after his junior year, leans toward what might be called trucker-chic. His favorite belt buckle prominently features two curvy Peterbilt girls, and he usually sports a downmarket-fashionable mesh-back hat. Protruding from under that hat is a thicket of blond hair so long that fellow former Cowboy Scott Verplank can't walk by Mahan without jokingly offering him $20 to get it cut.

Most importantly, Leonard came to Troon as a smart-money favorite, having posted three top-fives in his previous four starts, including a win, his second on Tour, at the previous month's Kemper Open.

Mahan, the second-youngest player on Tour, on the other hand, is being given no chance to win, and hardly merits one.

As a junior, he took the American Junior Golf Association Player of the Year in 1999, and twice earned first-team All-America honors at OSU, thus making him one of the game's most promising youngsters.

However, Mahan's pro career has thus far been nothing to drop your jaw about. In this, his first full year on Tour, he's made only 7 of 18 cuts. Even his best outing, the Bay Hill Invitational, was disappointing. Tied for 12th after the first two rounds, he shot 79-74 on the weekend to spiral to T62. After his Saturday round at Bay Hill, he seemed utterly at sea, endlessly rehearsing different takeaways, and trying to figure out what was going wrong. When he actually hit a practice ball, he did it with a four-plane swing.

Lately, though, his game has taken a turn for the better. In May, he returned to Smith, his long-time swing coach, after a year-long stint with Leadbetter apprentice David Whelan. Whelan did some quality work with Mahan, and even caddied him through last year's Q-school, where Mahan finished T16 to earn his card. But the changes Whalen tried to implement were in the long-term ill-advised.

"I just wasn't getting any better," Mahan said last week at the John Deere Classic, where he shot 68-73 to miss the cut by a stroke. "We just didn't communicate very well. It was a new language for me, and I was losing touch with my swing."

Mahan went back to Smith the week before the EDS Byron Nelson Classic, and missed the cut there, but then made four straight. "Randy and I just communicate well," he said, noting that he and Smith, who began coaching Mahan, then 13, in 1985, have years of experience together to draw on. "We understand what we're saying to each other immediately, and I can pick things up really fast." (Leonard, for the record, left Smith about two years ago to work with Butch Harmon.)

For Mahan, going to Scotland was not necessarily the wisest thing to do. After a poor start to the season, most pros don't even think about the British Open. They prefer to say home, play the John Deere, B.C. Open and Greater Milwaukee Open, against relatively weak fields, and try to nail down their jobs for next year.

"If you go over, it's a three-week commitment," says Chris Smith, winner of the 2002 Buick Classic, who this year, while spending the last of his two-year PGA Tour winner's exemption, needs to finish in top 125 on the money list to keep his card. "You have to go over a week early to have any kind of chance to do well, and then there's a week of the tournament, and a week after to recover."

That way of thinking was lost on Mahan. On the Monday after the Booz-Allen Classic, he went to British Open qualifying at Congressional and shot 64-72 to earn a spot. Naturally, his attempt to qualify was endlessly second-guessed, as most people around the Tour were aware that his position on the money list (he's presently at 179) was bad bordering on desperate. On the range the next day at the Western Open, one longtime Tour caddie smirked, "That was the stupidest 64 anybody's ever shot."

Not to Mahan, it wasn't. "Any time you can play a major, it's a good thing, a positive thing," he said. "I guess I could stay here and try to make sure I get my card [for next year]. But you can't win a major unless you play in the majors. Look at guys like Paul Lawrie, Jean Van de Velde and Ben Curtis. The opportunity to win there is pretty good for anybody. A couple of good bounces can go a long way."

Those remarks may be overly optimistic, but they reflect a confidence that sets Mahan apart from the other pros situated at the nether-regions of the money list. Confidence alone won't win you a British Open, but you can't win one without it. Just ask Justin Leonard.