MAJOR CHANGES

With Charl Swhartzel’s victory at The Masters it didn’t take long for someone to point out that an American  does not hold at least one of the four Major titles.  It got me to wondering if this was an unprecedented event.  Has there ever been another occasion when the Americans were blanked since 1934, when the first Master’s was held?  

I was surprised to learn that one doesn’t have to look that far back to see that this is in fact the second time it has happened.  In 1994 Jose Maria Olazabal (Spain) won the Masters, Ernie Els (South Africa) was U.S. Open Champ and Nick Price (Zimbabwe) won both The Open and The PGA titles.

Actually, the announcer who made the observation quite rightly pointed out that all four titles are now held by European Tour regulars, as opposed to USPGA Tour full timers.  It was not an anti-American statement as much as it was a pro-European remark.  There has been a lot of that in the past year, and it begs the question why there weren’t such comments being bandied about in 1994.  There are a variety of reasons why the current situation is different and they are interesting to ponder.

Sixteen years ago, while Olazabal was essentially a European Tour full timer, both Els and Price were USPGA Tour stalwarts.  Schwartzel, Kaymer, Oosterhuis and MacDowell are all European Tour regulars with only occasional appearances on American soil.

Another major difference of course is that 1994 was pre-Tiger.  Both Els and Price have held The World Number One ranking (for 9 and 44 weeks respectively.)  While Olazabal never made it to the top, had he beaten Ian Woosnam at The Masters in 1991 (he finished second) he would have become the World number one.  Tiger of course held the top rank for a stunning 623 weeks (with Greg Norman a distant second at 331 weeks.)  Kaymer is number one as of this writing, but MacDowell, Schwartzel and Oosthuizen are well back at 6^th, 11^th and 28^th respectively.  The importance of Tiger’s dominance to this story is that his brilliance blinded the Americans to what was going on across the pond.

True, back in 94’ Colin Montgomerie won the second of his seven consecutive Order of Merits and reached his highest ever ranking of number two.   Given that, even with his complete dominance of the European Tour, he still couldn’t reach the number one spot, it isn't difficult to understand why the Americans felt the Europeans to be a minor threat.  It does demonstrate the depth of the US Tour at that time as Tiger didn’t turn pro until 1996.  And Tiger’s rise to number one in a record 42 weeks blotted out anything noteworthy happening in Europe. 

In fact the focus on Tiger was so intense that any golfer no matter where he called home had no choice but to tee it up at US Tour events and compete against Tiger if he wanted to be considered a ‘real professional.’  The growth of purses that his star power generated was another thing that could not be ignored; European purses being about 50% of American.

But the European Tour did not crawl off into a corner and die.  In fact it got bigger and better.  The topsy turvy American economy has made finding new sponsors and keeping old ones the bane of every US Tour Commissioner.  Yet, the European Tour has had no such difficulties. Of course, junior golf development programs like The First Tee, as well as strong college level golf, has always meant that there will be plenty of talent in the U.S. But, Tiger's popularity woke the Europeans up to the fact that they must also invest in their youth and grow the game.  Their rise in Ryder Cup competitiveness bears this out, as does the addition of the very successful Race to Dubai in response to the FedEx Cup playoff system.

So, when Tiger crashed and burned last Thanksgiving, the Europeans were poised and ready to step into the void created by his absence and resulting loss of dominance.  More so it would seem than Tiger's fellow Americans.  And it is this fact that makes me think that we probably won't have to wait another 16 years before non-American players hold all four major titles again.