AMERICA STRIKES BACK

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July 30, 2007

Led by new Argentina sensation Andreas Romero, Americans swept the board in the big four professional tournaments around the world this week …

Led by new Argentina sensation Andreas Romero, Americans swept the board in the big four professional tournaments around the world this week – three of them in Europe
Was it an answer, perhaps, to those critics who, prompted by the fact that the Americans this year have won only one major (Zack Johnson at the Masters) and one WGC event (Tiger Woods) and were trounced in their last Ryder Cup battle with Europe, are saying that the once mighty USA is a waning power in golf?
Maybe.
Romano, who is, of course, a South American like his compatriot Angel Cabrera, last month’s US Open winner, was able to shrug away his great disappointment at blowing his chances of winning the Open at Carnoustie just eight days ago and came hammering back with a decisive three-stroke victory at the European Tour’s prestigious Deutsche Bank Players Championship of Europe in Hamburg.
But the other three big weekend winners are all the real McCoy; all born and bred citizens of the US of A
At about the same time that Romero was winning in Germany, US golf’s pin-up girl and TV celebrity Natalie Gulbis was helping to advance the glamour aspect of women’s golf worldwide in France by claiming her first title in her three or four years on Tour at the Evian Masters, a kind of second tier major co-sanctioned by both the LPGA and the European Ladies Tours.
On hour or two later the USA’s five-time Open winner Tom Watson was picking up his second Senior British Open at Muirfield, his closing 73 being enough to hold off a three-man chasing posse consisting of two Americans, Mark O’Meara and Loren Roberts, and an Australian, Stewart Ginn.
Jim Furyk, the World No 3, was the third American star to feature as a winner on Sunday, in his case his victory coming in the Bell Canadian Open in Ontario where he edged the Fijian 3rd-round leader Vijay Singh with a sizzling final round of 64 that included a hole-in-one.
After all the clamour and the shouting that greeted Irishman Padraig Harrington’s long awaited triumph in a major at Carnoustie last week, Europeans didn’t have too much to cheer about this week.
Apart from Brian Davis in 26th place, they were nowhere to be seen in Canada, shared joint 10th place thanks to Sam Torrance, at Muirfield, shared 4th place via Annika Sorenstam at the Royal Evian Resort and shared second place on their own European Tour through Dane Soren Hansen and Englishman Oliver Wilson at Gut Kaden in Germany.
Cheers
Neville Leck