GOLF LINKS CHAMPIONSHIP: ANOTHER SUNDAY in top-class professional golf, another stunning victory for Martin Kaymer and another reprieve for Tiger Woods, who held on to the world number one ranking yesterday after Lee Westwood came up short on the final day of the Dunhill Links Championship.
The injured Englishman, currently ranked number two in the world, needed to finish first or second at the home of golf to usurp Woods but signed for a closing 73, one-over, and a tie for 11th place.
“Not bad on one leg,” he said afterwards.
It was not bad at all, although it was nowhere near good enough to challenge Kaymer, who finished with more than a flourish. One moment the German was being hounded by the 23-year-old Englishman Danny Willett, the next he had holed a 50ft putt for birdie on the infamous Road Hole and then followed that with another birdie on the 18th, hitting his approach shot off the road that runs across the fairway at St Andrews to within six feet of the flag.
“The putt on the 17th was pure luck. If you had given me a par there I would have paid you good money for it. And the birdie on the 18th – that was more luck than skill,” he said.
Full marks for modesty, but Kaymer’s explanation simply does not sit well with the facts. His final round of 66 gave him a total of 271, 17-under par, and a three-shot victory over Willett and a four-stroke advantage over John Parry, another young Englishman who led by two overnight but three-putted the 11th and 13th, then went into a gorse bush for a double-bogey seven on the next.
“I lost all my momentum,” he said. “It’s not like I bottled it, I just don’t think I was playing well enough on the day.”
Kaymer has now won the last three tournaments in which he has played, a run of success that started at the US PGA Championship in August. Throw in Europe’s dramatic Ryder Cup victory at Celtic Manor last weekend, to which he contributed 2½ points, and no wonder there are some people who would argue that “to hell with what the world rankings say, the German is the best player in the world right now”.
Kaymer, who will find his name listed at number fourwhen the new world rankings are published this morning, is not one of those people. “If I am honest, Lee Westwood is number one in the world right now and the way he played golf last week [at Celtic Manor in the Ryder Cup] showed why he is up there,” he said.
The German spoke with a sincerity born of recent personal experience, having twice been paired with Westwood in south Wales and on both occasions being very much a rather nervous junior partner.
“Lee played so solidly last week. His putting was good, chipping – his entire game was fantastic,” Kaymer said. “He helped me a lot. I see him as a role model, one of the very best golfers we have in Europe and he is such a great guy.” Suffice to say, Westwood need not look far if he requires a personal reference on his next job application. Nor, as it happens, will he have to wait long to finally overtake Woods at the top of the world rankings.
The Englishman confirmed after finishing his round yesterday that he will take a break from the game in an effort to fully heal his troublesome calf injury. That absence, coupled with Woods’ decision to stay at home to practise and the baffling mathematics underpinning the rankings system, means he will rise to number one on October 31st, so ending the American’s 278-week run as the world’s top player.
It is a complicated equation – it always is when the world rankings are involved – and it is hardly a satisfactory way of fulfilling the dream of a professional lifetime, although Westwood was not about to apologise. “I’ll take it anyway it comes,” he said. “I was leading the world-ranking points this year before I got my injury.”
As for his ascent from the depths of a world ranking of No 252 to the cusp of world number one, he cited hard work, determination, taking responsibility for his own golf swing and listening to just one person: “Me.”
Guardian Service
