As a group, they've achieved almost everything else in this century. Five Ryder Cup wins over the Americans.
cheap golf clubs Eight major championship victories. And countless tournament triumphs across the globe. But so far in this century, no European golfer has donned a green jacket.
It's an oddity, as even a glance at the Official World Golf Ranking over the past 12 and-a-bit years shows only too clearly. Even more so when one considers that not so very long ago, the Old World came close to dominating the youngest of the four most important titles in the game. Between 1980 and 1999, six European stars (Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Sandy Lyle, Nick Faldo, Ian Woosnam and Jose Maria Olazabal) pulled on golf's most famous garment. But, since then: nothing.
So what's the deal? What's going on here? Why has this clearly gifted and talented generation of Euros failed so miserably on a course where their immediate predecessors flourished so memorably?
"The crop of really good European players that has emerged over the last decade or so have all -- apart from Luke Donald -- been marginal putters," contends leading coach and CBS commentator Peter Kostis. "Except during the Ryder Cup. Ian Poulter has certainly displayed some great skill on the greens in that environment, but I'm not sure he has the ball striking to win the Masters. Then again, he is now better in that area than he has ever been. So you never know.
"Back in the days when Faldo, Ballesteros, Olazabal and Langer were winning the Masters, what they all had in common was great putting. The last line of defense at Augusta National is the fiercely sloping greens. So if you can't putt, you can't score well there.
"I think Rory McIlroy would have won a couple of years ago if he had been a better putter.
Mizuno JPX 800 Irons sale The putts he missed early on in the final round seemed to rattle him. Had he made those, I think he would have calmed down and the back-nine debacle that did ensue would not have happened."
