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Somebody was saying the other day that there are no more good stories in golf. No characters such as the Merry Mex Lee Trevino or Tom Weiskopf, who had a gorgeous swing and always said what was on his mind.

The fellow was wrong. Meet Michael Allen, the winner of the Senior PGA Championship that concluded Sunday at the classic Canterbury Golf Club just outside Cleveland.

Yes, Michael Allen. He turned 50 on January 31st and he hasn’t won on the PGA Tour in 334 starts and he had to rely on a special invitation from the PGA of America to play its championship, one of its majors. A tournament in which major champions Tom Watson, Larry Mize, and Jeff Sluman were playing.

It was also a major in which you’d have had to be crazy to think Allen had a chance to win. He was playing his first tournament on the Champions Tour, and it was a major.

Other golfers have won senior majors in their debuts with the over-50 set. The names of these former winners are Jack Nicklaus, Arnold Palmer and Roberto De Vicenzo. You wouldn’t think Allen would belong in their company, would you?

But now he does. He’s another improbable winner in the world of golf, joining the amateur Shane Lowry, winner of last week’s Irish Open.

Surprises are becoming not so surprising in golf.

But Allen? He was so disenchanted with his golf in the mid-1990s that he took on a job as an assistant pro at the Winged Foot Golf Club in Mamaroneck, NY. He dabbled in the house construction business.

He decided to return to golf. Never mind that he hadn’t won on a big tour since taking the 1989 Bell Scottish Open. He decided to continue a role he wanted to escape: golf’s ultimate journeyman.

Allen won the 1998 Greater Austin Open on the Nike Tour, now the Nationwide Tour. He kept trying to play the PGA Tour, and by now has been through qualifying school seven times. He’s 153rd on the PGA Tour money list this year. His best finish is a tie for 22nd in the AT&T National Pro-Am at the Pebble Beach Golf Links in Pebble Beach, Calif.

“To me, it has been a struggle, but it’s a struggle I enjoy every day,” Allen said.

His last PGA Tour event was the recent Players Championship. He finished 63rd. Then he teed it up in the Senior PGA Championship.

Allen shot 74 in the opening round.

So what? He followed with a 66 and a 67, and took a one-shot lead over Mize to the last hole in the final round. He killed his drive, 315 yards. His sand wedge finished left of the hole about 10′. Mize was finished. Allen was in the last group, and had two putts to win.

He rolled his putt up and it fell in drunk on the left side. Allen won $360,000 (U.S.), and can now play all the Champions Tour events he’d like.

But he plans to continue playing the PGA Tour. He said he just might become the first player to win on the Champions Tour before he wins on the PGA Tour.

Now that’s a wild idea. Surely it can’t happen.

Or maybe it can.