Golf: Philip Reid looks ahead to the new season and asks if Padraig Harrington is the man to end the European drought

It's not so much that the goalposts have been moved, rather a case of the bar being raised. By Tiger Woods, the world's number one. And by Padraig Harrington, the world's number seven. Even by Graeme McDowell, the world's number 188.

Professional golfers judge their season by performances, not just in the week-to-week grind of the tour itself - whether that is in the United States or Europe - but by how they do in the majors.

So it is that, as ever, the year 2003 will be viewed as a success or a failure by performances in the four major championships: the US Masters, in April, which, despite a ban on street protests by the local police force, is likely to have as much attention focused on it for Augusta National's gender bias as for the fact that Woods, forever the trend setter, will be seeking an unprecedented third green jacket in succession; the US Open, in June, which returns to a course - Olympia Fields, south of Chicago - which last played host to the event seven decades ago; the British Open, in July, which returns to Sandwich on England's south coast for the first time in 10 years, and the US PGA, in August, which will be played for the first time at Rochester, in upstate New York.

Indeed, heading into 2003, there are more imponderables than usual to consider. Woods, of course, is the man they all have to beat every time a ball is placed on a tee.

He has been world number one for 247 weeks - and will pass the record length of time spent at the top by Greg Norman later this year. But Woods will miss the opening weeks of the US Tour after undergoing arthroscopic surgery before Christmas to remove fluid inside and outside the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

At the time of the operation, Woods remarked, "the bottom line is, I just got tired of playing in pain every day, all day, and decided to take care of it".

The real bottom line is that Woods does not take risks, so expect him to rejoin the circuit fitter and stronger than ever.

The surgery has given him a nine-week break - longer than any time spent away from competitive golf in his professional career - and, remember, that when he underwent laser surgery on his eyes in 1999, he came out and won five tournaments in a row.

So, who can track the fit-again Tiger and swing him by the tail in 2003?

After all, Woods has been the dominant player of the past six years, during which time he has won eight majors, and seven of the last 13.

Rich Beem proved it could be done when he fended off Woods down the stretch in last year's US PGA at Hazeltine, and Ernie Els - with a new fire in his belly after his British Open triumph last summer - believes he is the man to step up the heat on Woods.

But what about an Irishman? What about the man the Yanks call Paddy? For the past two seasons, Harrington has topped the stroke average on the PGA European Tour, which is by far the best way of assessing how a player has performed through a particular campaign.

In 2002, he moved up a rung on the ladder. So much so that he is no longer a secret weapon to be fired at Woods, or any other of the top Americans. They know all about him.

He had three top-10 finishes in the majors last year, and should have had four - being deprived in the US PGA by a muscle spasm in the neck-cum-back region that forced him to receive on-course treatment during the third round. He was to finish only one shot out of a fourth top-10.

Since then, he has progressed even more. He has won twice on the European Tour - the Dunhill Links in October, and the Asian Open in November - as well as going into Tiger's backyard to win the Target Challenge and $1 million in prizemoney.

It's not only the way that he showed an ability to close out tournaments at the tail-end of last season to win, but a belief from the player that he has yet to fully develop that indicates that he will be a serious contender in the majors this year.

"I'm progressing and I haven't stopped progressing," he insisted. "I feel there is better things to come. I am still trying to improve my game, to be a better player.

"I know I can still improve in all areas of my game."

From a European perspective, the sad statistic is that there has not been a winner of a major from this side of the Atlantic since Paul Lawrie won the British Open at Carnoustie in 1999.

In the meantime, 13 majors have been played - and none has finished in the hands of a European golfer.

Given his upwardly mobile graph, Harrington could be the best bet for one of the European players to end that dismal statistic.

What of the rest of the Irish? After his win in the English Open last June, Darren Clarke went until the Volvo Masters in November before securing another top-10 finish in Europe.

He slipped from 11th to 23rd in the end-of-year world rankings but, in the words of Sam Torrance, "form is temporary, class is permanent", and Clarke should anticipate a much more rewarding year ahead.

Likewise, apart from his Ryder Cup heroics, Paul McGinley found himself on a slippery slope last year when he fell from 35th in the world to 100th. He doesn't start his 2003 travels until the Malaysian Open at the end of February, but he too anticipates a better year in terms of personal results.

There are many other to watch, including Des Smyth and Eamonn Darcy, who have departed for green pastures on the Champions Tour (formerly Seniors Tour) in the US. And there is the plethora of younger players, among them Graeme McDowell, who moved from 1,202nd in the world to 188th in his first six months as a professional, and Peter Lawrie, Gary Murphy and Damien McGrane, all of whom have full cards for the European Tour this season.

All in all, 2003 could be an even better year than 2002 for the Irish.