EURO DROUGHT PUZZLES LANGER

Features
  • June 25, 2007

Bernhard Langer can offer no magic formula to the European golfers still striving to emulate him as a major winner.

Bernhard Langer can offer no magic formula to the European golfers still striving to emulate him as a major winner.
“Just play better,” said the 49-year-old double Masters champion, as surprised as anybody by the eight-year barren spell.
“I think we have the talent and I don’t know the reasons why it hasn’t happened yet for them.
“Majors define your career and eventually you have to cope with the pressures – that’s what separates the great from the good.
“Small things make a big difference and you constantly have to analyse how you are performing. But I’m surprised nobody has come through yet because look how well they have played in the Ryder Cup.”
Since Paul Lawrie’s victory in the 1999 Open at Carnoustie – the course where they will all try again again next month – there have been 82 top 10 finishes by 30 different European golfers in the four majors. Not one of them a win, however.
Sergio Garcia and Padraig Harrington lead the way with 12 and seven top 10s since Lawrie, while this season Justin Rose was one behind with two to play in the Masters and double-bogeyed the 17th to finish fifth, while at the US Open a week ago Rose and Paul Casey shared third place after 54 holes, but slipped back to 10th with 76s.
The top two Europeans instead were Swede Niclas Fasth in fourth place and England’s Nick Dougherty in seventh.
Langer, winner of the Masters in 1985 and 1993, did not have a single major winner in the Ryder Cup team he captained to a record nine-point win over the Americans in Detroit in 2004.
At the end of that match he commented: “I believe very strongly that we have major winners in this group of golfers.
“I’m convinced that several of these guys in here will win majors. It’s just a matter of time. This is a very, very young group of golfers and they can all win majors.
“We play whatever it is, 50 weeks in a year, and there’s only four majors, so you’ve got to be on top of your game that particular week because if you’re not somebody else will be.”

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