Westwood Major woe

Alasdair Reid

Rugby reporter

Sunday 12 August 2012

There is a saying among gamblers – the wise ones at least – that nobody ever got rich betting on streaks to end.

Lee Westwood missed the cut after a round of 77 Photograph: Getty

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Alasdair Reid

Their reasoning embraces a principle that a few golf pundits might be prudent to adopt and adapt. Nobody ever looked smart backing Lee Westwood to win a Major.

And yet they still do. The earnest analyses are wrapped in deductive reasoning – driver accuracy statistics, sand-save percentages, you know the sort of stuff – but they are underpinned by something more akin to blind faith, a logical process right up there with staring at tea leaves. In short, the thinking is that he has got to win one sometime.

Too good not to, the argument runs. And yet Westwood has been too good not to for a worryingly long time now. Almost 20 years have gone by since he first turned professional, and it was 12 years ago that he ended Colin Montgomerie's seven-year streak by winning the European Tour Order of Merit. If he is still figuring out how to win a Major this could be the longest learning curve in history.Westwood went through a gruesome slump around 2001/2002, but he came back better and stronger. His game might have gone to pieces for a while, but to watch him over the next few seasons you would have sworn it had gone to finishing school instead. He was still in his early 30s. A Major by the time he was 40 seemed all but inevitable. Well now he has just one chance left. Westwood will enter his fifth decade on April 24 next year, nine days after the final day of the Masters. Having failed to make the halfway cut at the PGA Championship at Kiawah Island, Augusta 2013 is his only opportunity to win one of the titles he craves before the big four-0 comes along.On a blustery second day in South Carolina, Westwood shot a round of 77. As bad as that sounds, it was actually a pretty respectable score in fiercely testing conditions and it moved him up the field more than 20 places. However, he was still languishing in a tie for 85th, eight-over-par and two strokes over the cut line. It was only his third missed cut in his past 25 Majors, so we should resist the temptation to pen Westwood's golfing obituary just yet. Over that same span of time, Westwood has accrued nine top-10 Major finishes, including two second places and five thirds. By any standard, it is an impressive record.Any, that is, except his own. When asked about his zero-for-59 Majors record, Westwood has taken to joking his way out of his corner, but those who know him best say it is no laughing matter for the man from Worksop. He has levels of wealth and status that almost every other player on earth would die for, but the thing that is killing him is that he has yet to touch the hem of greatness with one of those four titles.Hence his plan to move to America within the next few months. A cynic might guess that Westwood is simply filling his pension pot by heading to Florida and committing himself to the US Tour, but his reasoning has far more to do with simplifying a life that is overburdened by onerous travel demands. And, as he points out, three of the four Majors are played over there.With almost 40 professional titles to his name, Westwood will need a few tea chests for his silverware alone. But then, there are no excess baggage charges when you own your own jet. In which light, sympathy for the man's plight should be restrained. Anyone who asks him where it has all gone wrong has to acknowledge that an awful lot of it has gone right.But like a politician, a top golfer passes a point where day-to-day concerns become secondary to the thought of creating a legacy. And right now Westwood is painfully aware that, by the accepted standards of his sport, he doesn't have one.

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Westwood Major woe

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