Americans running scared

Reading American golf websites, you would be forgiven for thinking the Ryder Cup was not happening at all next week.

The biennial match is supposedly the biggest golf tournament in the world, certainly from a team perspective, and the Americans should be hell-bent on revenge after three morale-destroying defeats at the hands of the unheralded Europeans.

One would expect the furore whipped up over the ensuing battle to be full of George W Bush style war rhetoric from columnists on partisan American sports websites like PGA Tour.com and ESPN.

While these two websites are always informative, entertaining and often controversial, the only Cup they are focussing on this week is the FedEx Cup, not the Ryder Cup.

Vijay Singh and Camillo Villegas dominate the golf news agenda Stateside, despite there being only eight days until the first tee shot at Valhalla, Kentucky.

The Fijian and the Columbian, along with Kenny Perry and Antony Kim who will make their Ryder Cup debuts next week, are chasing the enormous pot of gold at the end of the FedEx Cup rainbow, four tournaments that offer prize money of $10m.

Money talks in sport, and with only pride on offer in the Ryder Cup, the American media are licking their lips at race for millions.

But it is not just the FedEx Cup’s scheduling just days before the Ryder Cup, that has knocked the Ryder Cup out of the headlines.

It is also because the Americans are running scared.

There’s no Tiger Woods this year because of injury, and for the first time in living memory they go into the Ryder Cup without a reigning major champion.

Here in Europe, after a major drought spanning eight years, we now have the best golfer in the world on present form, Padraig Harrington, winner of three out of the last six majors.

The American media are also embarrassed by their form over the last decade of Ryder Cups, and have sought to smear the good name of the famous old trophy.

Following a record equalling 18.5-9.5 win at the K Club, concerns began to emerge over here that Europe’s dominance in recent years - winning five of the last six matches - could be a double-edged sword.

As well as Europe plays, as united as they become in the face of such overwhelming favourites they share the first tee with, it only serves to diminish the interest shown in the competition by the American galleries, and the people who fuel their conspiracies, namely the American media.

After losing a third straight Ryder Cup 24 months ago at the K Club, certain sections of the American media suggested the President’s Cup, where the US team take on a Rest of the World team packed with major winners like Singh, Ernie Els, Retief Goosen and Mike Weir, had overtaken the Ryder Cup as the principle team golf game.

Team Europe, with no major winners from 1999 to 2006, no longer held the right to be considered worthy opponents for the mights USA.

No doubt the players themselves did not feel that about Samuel Ryder’s trophy, steeped in tradition.

What those three consecutive defeats did prompted a change in attitude from the American golfing authorities, with 2008 captain Paul Azinger immediately announcing on taking office that he would increase his wild card picks from two to four.

Not the biggest of alterations to the format, but a revolutionary move nonetheless, and one that showed the America team, regardless of the media, are serious about winning back the Ryder Cup and restoring faith to their own game.

Nick Faldo’s team Europe go to Valhalla in unknown territory, as favourites. The Americans, who declare winners of their own sports like baseball and football as world champions, aren’t used to being the underdogs.

No doubt next week, after Villegas, Singh or some other fortunate walks off with enough money to feed a small country, the American media will shift focus to the Ryder Cup, but it won't be with the same inspirational rhetoric as before.

That's because Team Europe have earned the right to dictate the golf headlines.

Bidding farewell to a pioneering legend

The game of golf bids farewell to one of its greats this week.

A professional in every manner of the word, who elevated the sport to a new level with a period of dominance unmatched by rivals.

A player who transcended boundaries, but who always had the utmost respect to the regular paymasters on a Tour she made her own over the past decade.

Women’s golf will be forever indebted to Annika Sorenstam who retires at the end of season. She departs the major scene in which she triumphed 10 times, at the Ricoh’s Women’s British Open at Sunningdale this week.

The 37-year-old is leaving golf for a career in business and to spend more time with her family.

No doubt she will be successful in both, having been a dedicated, determined and pioneering golfer on the course.

Born in Stockholm in 1970, the blonde-haired Swede had a similar impact on the women’s Tour to that of Tiger on the men’s tour.

She elevated women’s golf from poor relation to respected equal.

Her dominance of the sport for more than a decade enhanced the quality of golf on show. She raised the bar that others since have tried to reach.

A graduate of the University of Arizona, Sorenstam split her time between playing in America and forging the reputation of the Ladies European Tour on her home continent.

In 1995 she gave notice of her intentions with victory in the US Women’s Open.

It was the first of 10 major titles, including the career grand slam which she completed in 2003 with the McDonald’s LPGA Championship and the Weetabix Women’s British Open at Royal Lytham, her only triumph in Britain’s main event.

Sorenstam won three LPGA Championships in a row and helped cement the Kraft Nabisco Championship as the womens game’s fourth major with another trio of titles in 2001, 2002 and 2005.

Her major-winning career came full circle in 2006 when she won the US Open at Newport for a third time, making it a grand 10 to her name.

With that victory she tied her great friend Tiger Woods on 10 major championship wins. Woods has since gone on to add four more titles, while Sorenstam slid down the rankings, overtaken by the new crop of American players like Morgan Pressel, the influx of players from the Far East and the growing dominance of Mexican Lorena Ochoa, who has strode out from the long shadow cast by Sorenstam, to dominate the sport in a similar fashion.

For years pundits drew hypothetical parallels as to who was the greatest golfer, Tiger or Annika?

In 2003, she got her chance to put that theory into practice.

In a landmark for women’s golf, Sorenstam became the first LPGA player to compete on the men’s tour at the Colonial tournament in Texas. Her inclusion in the field polarised locker room opinion, Vijay Singh the loudest voice calling for her to stick to her own tour.

Sorenstam missed the cut, largely due to her lack of length off the tee and from the fairway when measured against the men.

But when it came to her short game she was than a match for her temporary peers, and at the end of two emotionally-draining days she broke down in tears, showing a human side that tugged on the heart strings.

There may be tears at Sunningdale again this weekend, whether she crowns her career with another title, or whether she fades into the field and makes the walk up the 18th fairway out of contention.

One thing is for sure, women’s golf has lost its greatest player and its greatest ambassador.

Fond farewell to World Matchplay

The decision to move the World Matchplay to Spain and end a 44-year association at Wentworth is a huge blow to English golf fans.

One of the country’s most popular tournaments has been revamped after losing HSBC as the sponsor after five years.

No other company came forward to bail it out - perhaps one of the biggest prize funds in golf putting off prospective sponsors - so England loses it’s richest tournament.

After a one-year break, the tournament will return to the European Tour schedule at the end of the 2009 season under the new benefactor of Volvo.

It has been a tournament on the decline for a number of years with a large contingent of the leading players from America not bothering to cross the pond, even for the vast sums of money on offer.

Tiger Woods only played in the tournament twice.

Jeff Maggert contested the event a couple of years ago, took a sound hammering from Retief Goosen in the first round and hopped on a flight later that day with $60,000 in his back pocket.

Not bad for half a day’s work, and yet the World Matchplay has consistently failed to attract the big names.
An entry system centred around the top four players in the majors became confusing when major winnners dropped out, leaving wildcards and former champions to get late invites to the tournament.

But despite this muddled strategy, the World Matchplay has always had a big named winner.

Ernie Els, who won what will be the final World Matchplay to be staged at Wentworth when he defeated Angel Cabrera last autumn, has made the championship his own in recent years.

It helps that he lives just a lob wedge away from the 14th hole on the Wentworth estate, but winning the tournament a record seven times is still a remarkable achievement.

Over the past 20 years the World Matchplay at Wentworth has been one of the biggest titles to win, it’s roll call of champions illustrating the high esteem in which it is regarded by players of this continent.

Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Ian Woosnam, Colin Montgomerie and Lee Westwood have all claimed one of the European Tour’s grandest honours.

They have honed their Ryder Cup skills in the fierce matchplay environment at Wentworth.
From personal memory, I enjoyed a wonderful afternoon strolling the magnificent Surrey course in 2003.

Thomas Bjorn was in the middle of a character-defining spell having two months earlier thrown away the chance to win the Open Championship.

I watched him defeat Mike Weir in an early round, the Canadian who had won the Masters at the start of the year, having no idea how to stop a European marching to yet another matchplay triumph.

Bjorn reached the final, scored a hole-in-one on the back nine, but lost out to great friend and Wentworth neighbour Els.

It was a memorable duel, one of many to be contested at Wentworth, and one that we will look back on fondly in years to come when the World Matchplay has established its new home in Spain.

Goosen's gaffe

How much of a fool must Retief Goosen be feeling right now?

Not a player you’d usually associate with shooting his mouth off, the South African this week chose to question the extent of the pain Tiger Woods was feeling every time he winced in agony at the US Open at Torrey Pines.

It took Woods 91 holes to finally end the challenge of plucky veteran Rocco Mediate, and Goosen about 91 minutes to give his views.

The question was asked of the two-time US Open champion whether he thought Woods had been ‘faking’ the knee injury.

Goosen replied: “I think so.

“You see when he made the putts and he went down on his knees and shouting ‘yeah’, his knee wasn’t sore.

“Nobody knows if he was just showing off or if he was really injured, and I believe if he was injured he would not have played. But it was a great win.”

Goosen then retracted his statement the following day, saying: “I was being light-hearted.

“No one but Tiger knows how badly hurt he was. But if he was really badly hurt, he would have withdrawn wouldn’t he?”

Now though we all know the real extent of Tiger’s injury.

Out for the rest of 2008 while he undergoes reconstructive surgery on his Anterior Cruciate Ligament.

It has even emerged - after Goosen’s gaffe - that he won the US Open not only on a dodgy knee but also with a double stress fracture of his fibula.

He’d not played competitively since the final round of the Masters, and while the gamble on his fitness paid off in the short term, it could be damaging in the long term.

But what an amazing competitor - to still claim victory in one of the toughest tournaments must rank as one of the greatest sporting achievements of all time.

And what an amazing mistake by Goosen.

He must be looking for the nearest beach to bury his head in the sand.

Whether Goosen was being light-hearted - as he later stressed - or not, he can considered himself ostricised from Tiger Woods’s Christmas card list.

Woods - who will be an irreplaceable loss for the sport over the next six months - does not suffer fools gladly.

Butch Harmon was the coach who guided him through his early years of world domination, but one small criticism on television saw the Sky Sports pundit out of a job.

Other players have crossed Woods and regretted it.

Woods is the kind of competitor who uses criticism to his advantage, it gives him yet more of a psychological edge over those he already has the beating of before he steps up to the first tee.

Goosen beware - and all those who doubted him.

Tiger will be back in six months, better than ever, and out for revenge.

Another chance for England's 'future' stars

ENGLAND’S young pretenders get another chance to axe the word ‘future’ from the prefix they are always labelled with, when the US Open tees off in a few hours.

Luke Donald, Paul Casey, Justin Rose and Ian Poulter are four men who have carried around the tag of ‘future major champions’ for long enough now.

Each of them has put themselves in a position to win, or at least challange down the stretch in one of the game’s grand slams, but each time they have faded away.

Add Lee Westwood to that group and you have a man who has won 29 times worldwide and is one of the continent’s greatest finishers, but even he falls short in the majors.

Perhaps adding Poulter to that list is a little ambitious considering he only has one top 10 in 23 appearances in the majors, but the fact that he has missed the cut only three times speaks volumes for his consistency.

When compared with Rose, Casey and Donald he has never really threatened to take a big title.

Rose was crowned European No 1 last October thanks largely to his performances in the majors.

He stood on the 17th at Augusta last year needing a birdie-par finish to force a play-off with Zach Johnson. In those circumstances you have to go for it, he did and unfortunately ran up a double bogey, but in doing so showed he had the bottle to at least put his game on the line.

He finished 10th at the US Open - he was fifth on his US Open debut at Olympia Fields in 2003 - and 12th at the Open and US PGA, a fine accomplishment that saw him as one of only seven men to make the cut in all four majors last year.

One of those was of course Tiger Woods, but Rose was in good company, Westwood, Poulter and Casey being the others.

Casey finished 10th in both the Masters and US Open last year, and has led majors before. At Augusta two months ago, he called a penalty on himself when the ball moved less than a milimetre, a decision that effectively ended his chances, but showed the character and sportsmanship a golfer possesses.

Donald is undergoing something of a slump having not won a tournament since the Honda Classic in 2006, and not challenged in a major since finishing third to Woods at the USPGA at the back end of that year.

However, all five of those Englishmen have the sort of game you need to excel in a US Open, accuracy and putting.

They’ve all had a sniff of what it’s like to contend, they just need to grab the chance.

Also working in their favour is that at 1.14pm west coast time in America, Poulter, Casey and Donald all tee off together as a threeball.

For the first two days they can relax in each other’s company, shut out the tournament rhetoric, the clatter of the huge leaderboards being changed and the smell of the catering vans, and just concentrate on playing some good golf.

And who knows, this time next week, one of them might have erased the word ‘future’ from their title.

Don't be fooled by Tiger's boast

Don’t be fooled when Tiger Woods dismisses his chances of making the US Open next week as: ”No big deal. I’ve won tournaments like that before.”

Make no bones about it, every sinew of the world’s leading golfer will be straining to be fit enough to tee it up alongside his peers at Torrey Pines next Thursday for the US Open.

“I’ve won tournaments like that before,” is a rare boast from golf’s superstar, who is of course referring to the 13 Major championships he already has in his collection.

You don’t reach a tally as remarkable as that with a laissez faire attitude.

You reach that by being hungrier, more talented and more determined than anyone else.

All characteristics that embody the Tiger.

Can you imagine even a 75% fit Tiger Woods not competing at the year’s second grand slam, foregoing the chance to continue closing in on Jack Nicklaus’s 18 Majors?

The US Open is the only one of the big four Tiger doesn’t already have in his pocket.

The Masters and the USPGA he has won four times apiece, and even after it appeared he could only win The Open at St Andrews, he went and triumphed at Hoylake two summers ago.

No, the US Open is the Major that appears least on his enviably long cv.

He blitzed the field at Pebble Beach in the first leg of the Tiger Slam in 2000 and then kept the leading players of the time like David Duval at arms length at Bethpage two years later.

But since then it has been a case of close but no cigar for the Tiger.

He pushed Michael Campbell to the wire at Pinehurst in 05. He even threatened to make Angel Cabrera sweat last year, but not even the presence of the game’s most fearsome competitor could make the sweat beads form on the big Argentine’s forehead.

Cabrera dealt with the rampaging Woods by nonchalently lighting a cigarette.

Sandwiched in between those was the US Open of 2006 which saw Woods miss the cut, a rarity in itself, but something that owed a lot to the passing of his father just weeks before.

Woods has shown he has the shot selection and discipline to compete at a US Open, with it’s tight fairways, punishing rough and lightning fast greens.

Plus Torrey Pines in San Diego is a course he has romped to victory at no less than four times, the last coming in January.

However, the course will play a lot tougher next week, the USGA will not be keen to see a repeat of the 19-under-par total Woods achieved five months ago.

And at the back of his mind, the knee injury that has kept him off the golf course since the final round of the Masters could threaten to prolong his wait for a third US Open title.

But he’ll be there next Thursday, teeing off alongside the best players in the world, hungry and determined.

The last thing he’ll be thinking is that it’s ‘no big deal’.