NICK FALDO won the final of his three Open Championship titles in 1992.
In the subsequent 23 years the Claret Jug has been won by a Scot in Paul Lawrie, won then retained by Irishman Padraig Harrington, and been delivered into the hands of two Northern Irishmen, Darren Clarke and Rory McIlroy. And yet no Englishman has prevailed over that timeframe. There have been runner-up finishes for Faldo, Ian Poulter and Lee Westwood but, despite a period when England boasted some of the finest players in the world, the most famous trophy in golf is yet to return south of the border.
It is something that continues to puzzle Justin Rose. "I don't have any theories on that," he mused after looking like he was giving it some serious thought. "If you look at the world rankings and what have you, we've definitely had some strong contenders and world No. 1s. So I really don't know. But hopefully it's about to turn."
English eyes will look to Rose, as the highest-ranked British player in the field, to lead the charge this week over the Old Course at St Andrews. He has yet to better his famous coming-of-age, fourth-placed finish as an amateur in 1998 but optimism remains undiminished that a lifelong wish will eventually be fulfilled.
"It would mean the world to become the champion golfer," he added. "It would be a realisation of a lot of childhood dreams and hard work. Growing up, this is the one tournament that I dreamed of winning. Obviously major championships, you'll take any of them. You don't get picky. They're hard to win. But if you were to get picky, this would be the one for me."
Like his nation's failure to land another Open champion post-Faldo, Rose's own shortcomings in the tournament have also left him befuddled. "I can play links golf, I know that for sure. I won the Scottish Open around a very links-y golf course in those windy conditions last year. I've been close in a couple of Opens. My record may not suggest that but there's been a couple where I felt like I had a great chance to win if a few things had gone my way or if I just got a bit of momentum. But yeah, I've had fewer chances than I would have liked, of course. My Open record isn't great. But I'm looking at righting that over the next five or six years."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article