Monday, July 13, 2009

No pleasing some people...

Golf fans - and golf writers - are a difficult breed to please.

When Tiger Woods was winning everything - before he admitted his leg was busted and gave everybody the psychological boost they needed, before taking it away again by saying he'd won the US Open with it - people were bemoaning his dominance saying it wasn't good for the sport.

'Where are all the other challengers?' the pundits mused. 'His dominance is ruining golf' they claimed.

Fast forward 10 months and followers of the women's game, particularly in the US, are upset for the opposite reason: there's no dominant woman - primarily there's no dominant woman, or even emerging woman, to whom the US public can lay claim.

After 23-year-old South Korean Eun Hee Ji took the US Women's Open title yesterday, critics in the US started bemoaning the fact that 16 different players had won the last 17 majors, with only world number Lorena Ochoa winning twice.

What really rankles one would imagine is that only eight of the last 37 major championships have been won by an American.

Surely the competition is great for the sport? One only has to look at Premiership football to realise how dull and uninteresting a sport can become if its front-runners are already determined before the start of the campaign.

In the last few years more focus has been on the bottom end of the table where the excitement and unpredictability is riveting.

Personally, if 16 different players had won the last 17 men's majors I'd be overjoyed - not least because chances are my Paddy Power account wouldn't look quite so bleak...
BUNKY

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