BETWEEN 1980 and 1999, Augusta National was a principality of American golf where more foreigners than natives gained admission to the champions' locker room. Europe's best golfers won the US Masters at no fewer than 11 of the 20 tournaments staged in those decades. It was an astonishing run of success which many felt couldn't last, and didn't.
This was a golden era for European golf amid the dogwoods and the pines when Seve Ballesteros, twice, Nick Faldo, three times, Bernhard Langer, twice, and Jose Maria Olazabal, twice, all slipped into more than one green jacket while Sandy Lyle and Ia
n Woosnam also made visits to the Butler Cabin.
Since the dawn of the 21st century, golfers from Fiji (Vijay Singh), Canada (Mike Weir), and South Africa (Trevor Immelman), maintained the international flavour of the season's first major, but Europe's finest haven't posed the same challenge over the past decade in Georgia as they've mounted in the others majors.
While Padraig Harrington during this period has won two Opens and a US PGA championship and Colin Montgomerie should have won the US Open in 2006, the favours which Augusta once dispensed so bountifully on European golf have become as rare as Penny Blacks in a book of stamps.
It's possible the explanation for this trend may either be cyclical or simply a question of chance. On the other hand, it could also be the extensive course changes undertaken by Augusta National in the aftermath of Tiger Woods' first record-breaking victory there changed the nature of the challenge so much that the revised test was far less suited to European strengths than was previously the case.
Where once Augusta was mainly a test of short game wizardry and the putter was the most important club in the bag – Johnny Miller once re-named the tournament the Augusta National Spring Putting Competition – it's now a bludgeoning examination of shot-making skills where the driver is at least as important as it is in the US Open.
If the Masters, when the course plays hard and fast, now resembles a traditional US Open war of attrition in which players struggle to match par – just think of the grinding victories eked out by Zach Johnson and Immelman over the past couple of years – then perhaps the European famine isn't so surprising. Monty's unrewarded excellence in America's national championship notwithstanding, no European has won the US Open since 1970.
Next month, however, all the early season portents suggest the Europeans are better equipped than at any other time since the Nineties to make a mark in golf's rite of spring. As the winner of three of the last six majors, Padraig Harrington's candidacy has been promoted with understandable enthusiasm ever since he became the first European to win the PGA since Tommy Armour in 1930. Given that he's twice finished in the top five at Augusta, it's little wonder Harrington is the bookmakers' third favourite behind Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson.
The range of European contenders is arguably wider than it's ever been, with 13 players – Sergio Garcia, 2, Harrington, 5, Henrik Stenson, 7, Robert Karlsson, 8, Lee Westwood, 12, Paul Casey, 13, Rory McIlroy, 16, Justin Rose, 21, Martin Kaymer, 23, Miguel Angel Jimenez, 24, Alvaro Quiros, 26, Luke Donald, 27, and Ross Fisher, 28 – all in the world's top 30.
Of that group, Casey, who was beaten 4 and 3 by Geoff Ogilvy on Sunday in the final of the Accenture Match Play, has finished in the top 11 at three of the four Masters he's previously entered. A long hitter whose game was honed for American golf during his time as a student in Arizona, the young Englishman acknowledges: "I honestly think the Masters offers me the best opportunity (of winning a major]."
No golfer has won the Masters on his debut at Augusta since Fuzzy Zoeller in 1979. Some 30 winters later and it isn't entirely out of the question McIlroy could follow in the American's footsteps. A quarter-finalist on his professional US debut at the Match Play, the 19-year-old was tipped by Ogilvy, who eliminated the teenager on Saturday, to break into the world's top three by this time next year.
With so much attention sure to surround the Irish challenge at the Masters, it's possible Garcia may be able to come in under the radar. The Spaniard hasn't made the cut since 2006, largely because of indifferent putting, but the quality of his driving and the creativity of his short game mean no-one at Augusta should be surprised if the world No2 emulates the success of compatriots Olazabal and Ballesteros.
The full article contains 788 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
