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Would major win make any difference for top Brits?

Keegan Bradley answers questions during a news conference © Getty Images

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What is the real value of one major championship?

Beyond the monetary, of course. Major winners in the modern era immediately become very rich men, but why do they also immediately become regarded as great golfers?

After all, the last 13 major championships - golf's holy grail, where the cream supposedly rise to the top - has seen exactly 13 different winners.

Of those 13, three were not winning their first major - Padraig Harrington at the US PGA in 2008 (after winning the Open Championship for the second time weeks earlier), Angel Cabrera at the 2009 Masters, and Phil Mickelson in the same event a year after.

Everyone accepts that the four majors are the key dates in the calendar each season. Win one of those, and your place in golf's Valhalla (the Norse 'heaven' for those who died in battle, rather than the course in Kentucky) is guaranteed.

Great players win major championships - that's how the thinking goes.

If that is the case, then it would follow that the 10 greatest players of the last three or four years have all been successfully identified and recorded. But patently that isn't the case - if for no other reason than the fact the world's two best players according to the world rankings, Lee Westwood and Luke Donald, remain majorless.

Then there's the fact that the most recent entrant into the major winner's club, Keegan Bradley, was a PGA Tour rookie with just one title to his name, a world ranking of 108 and not one previous appearance in such events before last week. He beat out Jason Dufner, a 34-year-old journeyman, in a play-off.

Bradley might turn out to be next Jack Nicklaus, but equally he could follow Ben Curtis in being a major winner at the first time of asking who subsequently disappeared from view.

Even the 25-year-old seemed to admit the still uncertain future that awaits as he basked in the glow of the Wanamaker Trophy.

"I don't want to be one of the guys that kind of disappears," Bradley said. "I would love to be up in a category with the best players and be mentioned with Phil Mickelson, one of my idols.

Woods' Woes

Tiger was off the pace in Atlanta © PA Photos

• If you want to find a player who has consistently managed to overcome the luck factor in a major then, beyond Jack Nicklaus (who at one point finished in the top ten 13 times in a row - with a T-11 finish the interval before another streak of nine) then you cannot really look beyond Tiger Woods.
  
• The American has a record top-ten streak of eight (including an incredible five wins), but that was compiled around the turn of the millennium. Since then he was blown hot and cold, and at Atlanta last week he was cold as he has ever been. Woods found 22 bunkers during his two rounds, and went from sand to sand with shots a staggering eight times. He couldn't find a fairway off the tee, and showed no signs of being the same strong putter he has always been.
• Put simply, Woods was a shadow of his former self - an assertion underlined by the fact five of the 20 club professionals in the field managed to beat him. After missing the cut in the US PGA he expressed a certain amount of happiness at finally being able to go away and work extensively on his game. But the "laundry list" (as he described it) of things he needs to address is alarming - especially as he conceded he no longer feels comfortable swinging a club and he talks in such French about his technique that you wonder if he's lost sight of his instinctive touch for the game.
• "In this model, we do a go-to shot. When I was with [former coach] Hank [Haney] it was dump the club at the top and obviously rip across and hit a big cut," he said. "The cut in this model is different so I'm going to have to get used to that. And again, the ball is not curving as much. I have a hard time aiming it, so it's a strange sight.
  
• "But my cut shots don't cut as much and my draws don't draw much. You think it would be pretty easy, but I've played for years a certain way, and I'm going to have to kind of get my sight lines where I feel comfortable with it."
  
• Woods was once so good he was elevated above the standard effect of luck in majors. Unfortunately, it is getting to the point where we can be almost certain that (outside The Masters) that will never be the case again. He may well win again, on tour or in majors, but you think before he gets to that point he needs to leave some of the technical behind and return to the instinctive.

"I hope I don't disappear. I don't plan to."

Since the all-time leading major winner, Nicklaus, clinched the first of his 18 titles in 1961, 102 other players have won the 200 championships that have been contended. Of those, 65 players claimed just the one title.

A number of those (Ken Venturi, Tom Weiskopf) were arguably unlucky not to win a couple more, while others (Ben Curtis, Shaun Micheel) may always wonder how they came to claim even one.

Move up to the double major winners, however, and the disparity is reduced. While Greg Norman unequivocally could have won many more, none were obviously fortuitous to win two majors. Indeed, it's only the pre-Nicklaus victories of Craig Wood (both in 1941) that you could perhaps subject to added scrutiny.

By the time you get to three-time major winners, you are looking at some of the finest players ever to play the game. The golfing greatness only increases as you move towards Nicklaus - via the likes of Arnold Palmer, Ben Hogan and Tiger Woods.

The obvious observation to make is this: Almost any pro can win one major championship. Only a truly great golfer goes on to win multiple majors.

Why then, do we make such a fuss about the fact Westwood and Donald have so far failed to make that final step? Both players got themselves into contention at Atlanta Athletic Club, not for the first time in a major this year (Donald at the Masters, Westwood - vaguely - at the US Open), which is all you can really ask when the advancements of modern golf - diets and fitness, coaching - have combined to create so many golfers of such a close standard.

With Woods in the doldrums (see right), there's no obvious star player in the game. When that is the case, luck plays a key role in any tournament outcome - and that is magnified in the majors.

Back in 2008, two business school professors analysed PGA Tour winners for a study in the Journal of the American Statistical Association. Using mathematical methods and studying events between 1998 and 2001, they worked out that winners on tour on average benefitted by around nine shots during the tournament purely from 'luck' (a fortunate bounce, a course that suited them, better weather conditions etc.).

In comparison, fluctuations in individual player's skill (putting better year-on-year, driving straighter) offered only a minimal shot improvement.

In many ways, the 2011 majors bear out some of those assertions. Darren Clarke was fortunate to get the best of the weather conditions on both Thursday and Friday at the Open Championship (and saw a thinned iron shot skip between two bunkers during his round on Saturday), while Rory McIlroy admitted even before the US Open that the Congressional course suited his draw-orientated game.

The Masters champion, Charl Schwartzel, chipped in twice during the final round of his two-shot victory at Augusta, while Bradley somehow managed to close out victory at the US PGA having melted down when in a similar position the previous week at the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational.

None of them were lucky winners. But they did have luck on their side.

Donald and Westwood, meanwhile, have two top tens in the majors in 2011, and have won three and two times respectively in other events (the tally would be reversed, had Westwood beat his compatriot in the play-off they contested at the BMW PGA Championship). Westwood's top ten major record now reads six from the last 12 - an impressive rate of consistency that only underlines the greatness of him as a player (borne out by his world ranking).

Westwood is becoming a regular force at majors - but does luck still hold him back? © PA Photos

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Donald's record in majors is not as stellar - but that might not be entirely his fault. With organisers feeling under pressure to make each event the gruelling, exacting challenge it is supposed to be, one of the basic methods they employ is by lengthening courses. Atlanta was made to be brutally long - so long that it required someone of Donald's power to be almost perfect off the tee to have any realistic chance of contending (Dufner being the player who managed it).

Donald couldn't manage it this time - some of his tee shots were uncharacteristically wayward, an indication of the pressure he was under - and that could continue to be the case for a while.

Nevertheless, the fact Bradley won does not make him a greater player than either of the two Brits - that would be like arguing Stephane Guivarc'h was a better forward than George Best because he won a World Cup. Win another, however, and Bradley certainly has a case.

If Donald and Westwood fail to win one major during the course of their career, then it may say something about their mental fortitude or the lack of luck they received on the biggest stages.

But it won't, or at least shouldn't, say anything about their ability - or otherwise - as golfers.

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