HE MAY not have won the 2001 Open -- but golfing legend, Tiger Woods, still has good reason to remember his trip to Royal Lytham.

The notoriously private American has revealed for the first time how he met and fell for his fiancee, Swedish beauty Elin Nordegren -- in the unlikely setting of the Fylde Coast.

28-year-old Woods spoke for the first time last week about his relationship with Nordegren, who was in Lytham working as a nanny for the family of her fellow Swede, Jesper Parnevik.

"Ever since Elin came into my life things just became a lot better," Woods told an American newspaper this week: "She is someone you can bounce things off, somebody who is a great friend.

"It's nice having that type of person around you. She's so much like me. She's very competitive, very feisty, just like I am."

Lytham has other happy memories for the golfing superstar. He first shot to international prominence in 1996, with what was then the best ever score for an amateur in the famous old competition.

But his 2001 Open was a more disappointing affair. Crowds flocked to see reigning champion Woods, but a difficult first round and a poor final round left him one under par -- nine strokes behind champion, fellow American David Duval.

Nordegren, a former swimsuit model whose mother is Sweden's immigration minister, now shares Woods' luxury Florida mansion home.

But, while the Fylde will always hold happy memories for the pair, Woods chose a more glamorous location to make his proposal -- he popped the question against the backdrop of a setting sun in a South African game park last November.