Stand and deliver

The last Englishman to lift the trophy was Nick Faldo in 1992 and the wait has produced a sense of deep longing and the odd question filled with unalloyed yearning. Donald was presented with a national dream put into words yesterday.

A vision of Sunday afternoon at Royal St George’s and Westwood and Donald in the last pairing was conjured up by a journalist eager to assess just which man would be under the greater pressure.

Donald, possibly drifting off into reverie, admitted he had lost his train of thought as he battled the question with his heavy artillery of cliche. There were some glimpses, though, that the player shared the dream. “I doubt coming down the stretch on Sunday there would be too much chitchat. We’d be very cordial but I think we would be getting on with business,” he said of this much-anticipated stroll with his friend.

Before venturing to discover just what Westwood or Donald would say in a winner’s speech, it may be more enlightening to assess their chances. Westwood, at 38, has the better Open record, finishing third at Turnberry in 2009 and second at St Andrews in 2010.

A natural progression to first in Sandwich is a fervent hope hampered by the realisation that the finish at Turnberry was marked by a desperate three-putt and that the runner-up at the home of golf needed binoculars to keep in sight of the winner, Louis Oosthuizen.

Westwood, though, has strong credentials despite never winning a major. He has won 21 times on tour, he is an excellent iron-player who should enjoy playing what is routinely described as a “second shot” course, and he has faith in his ability. “My form is right where I want to be,” he said yesterday. “I’ve been playing well and had a good stretch of results. This is a week I look forward to all year. I try to gear my game up for this week. I’m happy with all aspects of my game.”

He accepted that Royal St George’s would be an ideal spot for an English winner. “It’s named after St George so you cannot get much more English than that. It would mean everything to win,” he said.

Time, too, is not on Westwood’s side. He joked about Colin Montgomerie’s observation that the Englishman might have only “a couple of years” left to win a major. “I played with him last week and wound him up about it. It depends how physically able you are and obviously I’m a finely tuned athlete who can go on well into my 40s,” he said.

This was greeted with a laughter that cannot obscure a serious point. Westwood has addressed fitness issues but a younger generation, headed by Rory McIlroy will be strengthened by the passing of time. Frankly, Westwood will not be.

Donald, five years younger, is in the form of his life. He has won three tournaments this season and approaches the Open from the standpoint as the world’s highest-ranked golfer. His candidacy as an Open champion has been supported by such luminaries as Tom Watson, but Donald has still to convince as a major contender. All too often he has flirted with the lead rather than embraced it on the major stage.

Donald knows he may be the world No.1 who has won the most recent tournament on tour but he still stands in the shadow of McIlroy in the build-up. “Obviously Rory is at the forefront of a lot of people’s minds and rightly so. He was impressive in the US Open and winning majors is a big deal, and he did it in great fashion. A lot of the attention is on him and maybe a lit bit more of the pressure as well,” he said.

This may have been a deft attempt to deflect the spotlight away from himself, but Donald is condemned to be the focus of a nation’s hopes this week. The last English player to win on the country’s soil was Tony Jacklin at Royal Lytham and St Anne’s in 1969. Donald, the master of the understatement, addressed this drought with the observation that an English winner would be welcome, adding: “I guess now is as good a time as any.”

The thoughts of a Sunday afternoon in the final group were then banished from his mind, squeezed out by comments on the difficulty of the course and the strength of the field. Westwood, in contrast, was very pubic about his ambitions for Sunday. He left his press conference to play his first practice session of the week on the course where he won an amateur championship in 1992 .

He enjoys the tee-off time of 3.30pm, reasoning that most golfers look for an early start and the course is consequently less busy as the day wears on. “It’s the best time to play,” he said. “Hopefully, on Sunday, I will be teeing off about that time, or maybe just a fraction earlier, so you want to be playing the course with a view to how it’s going to be for the rest of the week.”

This revealed Westwood is looking to the future with words of confidence. It will need blows of a similar certainty to escape the shackles of the past.