It is a title which used to belong to Colin Montgomerie. The Scot always made a valiant attempt to explain that he would not want to swap his seven successive European Tour Order of Merit titles for a lone major without anyone quite believing him. By the same token, Westwood’s philosophising on the subject is no longer as convincing as it once was.
It was in China a year or so ago, when he had to wait endless hours on an out-of-the-way tee during a Pro-Am, that he analysed his overall career as follows.
"If I were standing here talking you today having won a major, I would probably give myself eight and a half out of ten. So how much should I knock off for not having played well in a specific week?"
The answer, here, was that that no one would probably have wanted to knock anything off that eight-and-a-half tally, particularly in an era when bagging a single major is relatively common-place. Keegan Bradley, Stewart Cink, Darren Clarke, Jason Dufner, Trevor Immelman, Zach Johnson, Martin Kaymer, Lucas Glover, Graeme McDowell, Louis Oosthuizen, Justin Rose, Charl Schwartzel, Adam Scott, Webb Simpson, and YE Yang are among the active players who posses one.
Yet, after his close call at the 2013 Open and a second disappointment at the subsequent US PGA championship at Oak Hill, Westwood, who will be 41 in April, had one of those moments when his inner feelings came to the fore. There may or may not have been an end-of-season drink involved, but he dispatched a couple of Tweets which told everything about how much he really cares.
The fellow who, in the wake of Westwood’s closing 76 - out in 41 and back in 35 -at the US PGA, said that the golfer needed to learn how to putt, got a terse reply along the lines that it was probably more important that he should get a life. Then, in a follow-up memo, Westwood said he was "just sick" of the negative so-and-sos who kept having a go at him.
Westwood, of course, had plenty of near-misses in majors prior to last year.
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