Gone are the days when the Majors were only for the privileged few, when Tiger seemed like the foregone conclusion. It quite literally is anybody’s game now.
In stark contrast and yet totally in keeping with the mood of today’s golfing landscape, Sergio is the oldest player to win a Major in 2017.
Such has been the run of debutant winners in the last three years it has left us looking around to see who is carrying a monkey on their back, with regard to a talented Majorless player. It’s now a tough call, you could argue Lee Westwood has the largest primate perched between his shoulder blades. Kuchar? Maybe.
I think the case could be made for Rickie Fowler now. He is truly a member of Golf’s equivalent to the Brat Pack, including Jordan Spieth, Justin Thomas, Smylie Kaufman. Disappointingly, for him and his fans, he hasn’t won a Major despite being in contention for every single one in 2014.
This new band of brothers who have blitzed their way onto the golfing landscape, are feeding off each other. They openly call Spieth the “Golden Boy” not just in homage to his Major haul but to his media persona and All American good looks. They were all present and correct, behind the eighteenth ready to anoint their group’s latest winner, Justin Thomas.
Between Spieth and Thomas this year they have won half of the Majors and have a Career Grand Slam between them, not bad considering both of them are age twenty-four. Furthermore, you shouldn’t be surprised that Thomas finished the season off winning a Major.
He did, this year, send a couple of warning shots across our bows, with two wins in Hawaii, a fifty-nine and a US Open third round of sixty-three.
If you look a little further back in time, say around four years, you will see that they were taking all of the honours in Collegiate golf and before then USGA Junior golf.
So, no surprises that they have come through the ranks comfortably.
The startling point to be made here is who didn’t win a Major this year, the list is quite something; Johnson (Dustin), Day, Oosthuizen, McIlroy, Stenson, Matsuyama, Rahm, Rose and even Mickelson.
It’s never happened before, I know I mentioned it in a previous article, that there has never been so many consecutive first time winners. Such is the strength of the game, the game which could not do without Tiger.
Unfortunately though, all of this ‘isn’t the game in great shape’ enthusiasm does leave me with a sense of foreboding. This time next year we will be anxiously waiting for the Ryder Cup picks alongside the full team line ups. With all of this youth and exuberance coming from the Colonial shores, I can’t help but look at the aging European
stalwarts.
Stenson, Rose, Westwood, Sergio and Poulter a case in point. I will delightfully concede that we have had some breakthrough talent in Fitzpatrick, Hatton, Fleetwood, Rahm and Noren. Great players, but they have not really contended for the Majors this year.
Counter this with that damned Ryder Cup Task Force, which was formed on the back of the US Gleneagles mutiny, I can’t help but feel that the US are closing ranks, becoming a happier tighter unit and are spreading the wealth of the Majors evenly across the team. This will make them more experienced.
If you look at Rory’s record, he has won more Majors than all of the European stalwarts put together and he hasn’t won a Major since 2014. We all know that in the heat of the battle the Europeans, on home soil, have had the advantage. We haven’t lost at home since 1993, at the Belfry.
There are twelve months to go, golf is in great shape, but….