Demi annum of Donald domination heralds changing of the guard in world golf
They say that every generation needs regeneration, and at the spearhead of a new golfing generation’s naissance is Englishman Luke Donald, who on Sunday took his stretch at the peak of international golf to six months.
It was Sunday May 29th that Donald was first crowned World Number One after a titanic final-round battle with Lee Westwood at The European Tour’s flagship event, The BMW PGA Championship at Wentworth Club, and half a year on from his dual triumph on that spring day he has never looked back.
Donald today enters his 27th week as World Number One, and with it surpasses Vijay Singh’s stretch of 26 weeks at World Number One between September 2004 and March 2005, making Donald’s stint at the top – apart, of course, from Woods – the longest since Greg Norman’s 96 weeks from 1995 to 1997.
To say that 2011 has been a stellar year for Donald would be a gross understatement. The impressive, and significant, victory at the BMW PGA Championship is one of four trophies he has hoisted over the course of the last ten months and was preceded by success at the WGC - Accenture Match Play Championship in Arizona and followed by wins at July’s Barclays Scottish Open and at the US PGA Tour’s Children’s Miracle Network Hospitals Classic in America last month – featuring a stunning last round that sealed an historic first place finish on the US Money List.
And with Donald, of course, currently heading The Race to Dubai there is an excellent chance that he will become the first man to top the money list on both sides of the Atlantic in the same year.
The win in Tucson undeniably acted as a catharsis for Donald and symbolised his metamorphosis from golf’s “nearly man” – as some had unfairly deemed him after only winning one title over the previous five years – to the finest exponent of the game on the planet.
That victory propelled Donald to a career-high of third position in the Official World Golf Ranking and with Martin Kaymer, Lee Westwood and Graeme McDowell first, second and fourth respectively, European Tour Members held the top four places for the first time since 1992, when Ian Woosnam, Sir Nick Faldo, Jose Maria Olazábal and Seve Ballesteros had topped the rankings.
It would prove a precursor of things to come, a portent to the winds of change, and prompted the beginning of what proved to be a ding-dong skirmish that would see Kaymer, Westwood and Donald trade places a number of times at the pinnacle of professional golf over the next few months.
Donald, however, was focused on being Number One, and he secured possession of that coveted place in thrilling fashion with his play-off win against Westwood in the BMW PGA Championship.
And as Donald passes the six month anniversary of his coronation to World Number One, the remainder of the top four is currently made up of Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy (second), Westwood (third) and Kaymer (fourth); once again another all-European top four are in situ at the top of the World Ranking – as has been the case on numerous occasions throughout the season.
Donald cannot now be usurped as World Number One in 2011 meaning history is set to be made again as, for the first time since Faldo in 1993, a European will have been the best-ranked player in the world for an entire calendar year.
But just as golf legends such as Faldo, Woosnam and Ballesteros had to give way in the mid-1990s to the advent of Tiger Woods, Singh, Ernie Els and Retief Goosen et al., golf seems set for another crucial and memorable juncture as the metaphorical baton is passed to the next generation of blossoming stars.
With 22 Major Championship wins between them, and after a combined 2,343 weeks in the world top 50, the aforementioned four giants of the last 15 years have all now slipped out of the top 50 in the Official World Golf Ranking: Woods to 51st, Goosen to 52nd, Els to 53rd and Singh to 60th. Even Phil Mickelson, another leading light in golf over the last decade and a half, has dropped out of the top ten for the first time since February 2004.
Every one of these five giants of the game still possesses the talent and determination to apply pressure on Donald, McIlroy, Kaymer, Westwood and co, but a new breed of fearlessly aggressive 20-somethings are also poised to make their mark.
A brief look at the results in Major Championships over the last two seasons offers somewhat of a microcosm of what surely looks like a “changing of the guard” at the business end of golf.
Since Mickelson’s victory at the 2010 Masters, six of the seven Major victors have been aged either 30 or under. In 2010, McDowell’s maiden Major at the US Open at Pebble Beach in June was followed by South African Louis Oosthuizen’s Open Championship win at St Andrews in July and Kaymer’s triumph at the final Major of the year in the US PGA Championship at Whistling Straits.
This year, the only anomaly to the rule has been Darren Clarke, who at the age of 42 became the oldest winner of The Open Championship since 1967 and the only Major victory of 2011 not to be posted by a golfer in his twenties.
Charl Schwartzel’s Masters success back in April was completed aged 26, McIlroy became the youngest US Open winner since 1933 in June aged just 22, while American Keegan Bradley captured his maiden Major at his first attempt at the US PGA in August, aged 25.
Meanwhile, the average age of the current top ten is just over 30 years old, compared to almost 34 at the same point five years ago, and half of the present top ten crop are in their twenties.
So far on The European Tour in 2011, 20 of the 49 tournaments played have been won by players under the age of 30, including multiple wins for Schwartzel and Kaymer at 26 and Alexander Noren at 28.
There was even one victory for a man under the age of 20: the Italian prodigy Matteo Manassero, who in April won his second European Tour event in the Maybank Malaysian Open at the tender age of 17.
Then there was another for a player competing in only his third Tour event: in October, England’s 20 year old Tom Lewis captured the Portugal Masters after carding a magnificent last round 65.
The likes of back to form Sergio Garcia of Spain, Japan’s Ryo Ishikawa, Australians Jason Day and Adam Scott and Americans Dustin Johnson, Webb Simpson, Matt Kuchar, Nick Watney, Bubba Watson and Ricky Fowler have already demonstrated their desire to rise to the top, although Rory McIlroy unquestionably set the standard with his winning of the US Open.
There seems an inevitability to the theory that McIlroy is on an unstoppable march towards eventually securing the World Number One. After starting the year in tenth place in the Ranking, the Ulsterman is up to a career-best of second but still faces an immense task to dethrone Donald.
This has been a bittersweet month for Donald, who sadly lost his father, Colin, just a few days before his second daughter, Sophia Ann Donald, was born, and he will return to action next month at the Dubai World Championship presented by DP World determined to celebrate Christmas as Number One in The 2011 Race to Dubai and as the already-guaranteed World Number One.
Donald will be well aware, though, that with the “changing of the guard” and the New Year will come challengers from “new” and “old” faces in 2012.
It seems appropriate to end on Donald’s own words, uttered at Wentworth shortly after completing the victory that helped him to World Number One.
“It's obviously a special accomplishment, something that I'll remember forever. It's something that will be a great story when I'm an old man telling my grandkids that I was once the best player in the world at golf.
“It's a little surreal and hard to believe in a certain way. You keep thinking that you have the ability and the talent, but you never quite really know. Whether it will change me, I don't think so. The goal for me is to always continue to focus on the processes of getting better, and just because I have reached the pinnacle of the World Rankings doesn't mean my work is done. I have a lot more to accomplish, hopefully many more victories in me, and hopefully I can at least be somewhat of a worthy Number One for a few weeks.”
Try 27 weeks. And counting.
