Andrew Male

Until Pádraig Harrington won The Open in 2007 you can guarantee that a significant amount of airtime would have been spent lamenting the last time a European won a major.  The last European winner before Harrington was Paul Lawrie who won The Open at Canoustie in 1999.  Although it doesn’t seem to occupy the commentators minds anymore I still wonder where the next British winner will come from.

This is not the longest drought for British golf.  Between Tony Jacklin in 1970 (US Open) and Sandy Lyle in 1985 (The Open) we went 15 years without a British winner. Only Seve was carrying the flag for Europe at this time (it’s a nice metaphor even if there wasn’t actually an official flag at this time).

So who was winning the majors during this period? Wikipedia has an all time winners list which I wanted to visualise.  This chart shows all the winners between 1970 and 1985.  When comparing this with the the last 15 years the number of one-time winners was 15 and 26 respectively. The chart groups everyone winning only one major into ‘Other’. Often the number of one-time winners is put down to the strength in depth of world golf. There are now 6 professional tours.  3 started in the early 70s and the Asian tour started in 1994.  Perhaps this is one factor, there are more talented golfers to share the victories with?

When we ask who the next British winner will be we aren’t just looking for a one time winner, unless it’s Monty. We all want Monty to win one.  We want British players challenging or winning like they were in the late 80s and through the 90s

I want to dig a bit deeper to see if the combined world ranking of the top 10 British players was lower during the 80s and 90s than it is now.  There is an archive of rankings going back to 1986 but I think I am going to find it hard to process some of the photocopied lists!  If I can work with these listings it might be possible to compare the world standing of British golf now to the times when Brits were winning.