• Out of Bounds

Donald's major message after Woods-esque display

Luke Donald has won five times in the last 18 months. Four of those wins have come in 2011, which has proven to be a career-changing one for the likeable Englishman.

He beat a succession of world-class opponents in one-on-one combat to win the WGC World Match Play in February. He then defeated the world No. 1, Lee Westwood, in a playoff at Wentworth to take that accolade for himself. And he massacred the field on the links at the Scottish Open - a type of golf he's not supposed to excel at.

In between all that, the 33-year-old established himself as indisputably the best golfer in the world right now - consistently finishing at the top of leaderboards around the world and accumulating more ranking points in a year than anyone else since a vintage Tiger Woods.

Yet, despite all that, it might be his victory at the otherwise insignificant Children's Miracle Network Hospital Classic last week that will do the most to convince Donald he can still achieve the one goal that eludes him - a major championship.

Donald came to the Disney resort knowing he basically needed to win in order to claim the PGA Tour money list - one half of a historic double (with the European Tour equivalent) he is chasing, a feat never previously (officially) achieved.

With just ten holes left, however, he was a full five shots off the lead. But six successive birdies during a back nine of 30 (to card a round of 64) later, however, Donald was holding aloft the trophy.

He needed to win ... so he did.

"It's one of the most impressive things I've ever seen," Gary Woodland, who one might suggest should probably watch a few David Attenborough-narrated DVDs, said. "He's had a couple weeks off, and he comes here to play, to do one thing. And he does it? I mean that's one of the most impressive things I've seen."

It's hard to argue with Woodland's sentiment, and Donald certainly didn't in his own post-tournament press conference.

"It's hard to put into words," he noted. "It's one of the most satisfying wins of my career, because it was do or die. This was a dream year. I think I answered a lot of critics' questions."

Breaking free

McIlroy is going his own way © Getty Images

• The world of golf agents was rocked - and that can't happen too often - last week, when US Open champion Rory McIlroy announced his decision to leave Andrew 'Chubby' Chandler's ISM agency for the relatively unheralded Horizon Sports Management.
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  Horizon are a relatively small Irish company whose biggest client is Graeme McDowell - perhaps McIlroy's best friend in the game - so it's not hard to see why they would be attractive to McIlroy. But to leave ISM, who have looked after him since he turned professional in 2007 and are coming to the end of a year of unprecedented success, is an altogether bolder move. Mooted contributing reasons for the split have been as numerous as they are individually relatively minor - ranging from McIlroy's desire to play more in the US, to Chubby's inability to give him specific attention - but it is interesting to note that the move came just days after McIlroy finished a seven-day exhibition tour around China. The 22-year-old spent almost that entire period either on a plane or on the course with Chandler and Westwood, yet unfollowed both on Twitter when his departure became public.
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  To base any insight on events on social media might be pushing things a bit far, but McIlroy's strained relationship with Westwood (who, upon hearing the news, tweeted "bizarre decision" to Rory, suggesting it came as a surprise to him too) has been talked about for some time, and the act does give rise to the suspicion that the split has not been as amicable as everyone has been so quick to stress.
• ISM are likely to miss out on millions of pounds in commissions on new McIlroy deals with his defection, rewards Horizon will now recoup. But with their remaining stable of golfers they should get by. The concern, therefore, is for McIlroy - they saw the worst thing you can do is believe your own hype, and it seems he might be going down that route. Changing his agents to get more individual attention, upgrading his girlfriend to a tennis star - is McIlroy still focusing on his golf?

The last comment is perhaps the most telling. Donald has certainly been the butt of a fair amount of criticism during his professional career - he was famously irked by the spread of the term 'Luke Donald Disease', to denote a player who earns a lot of money without ever contending to win events - but the suspicion lingers that it is really his own questions that he has just answered.

This year he has proven unequivocally that he can win on a consistent basis, something that he seemed unsure whether he could in years prior. But he fell short of those same standards in major championships. For better or worse, he knows it is whether he wins one of those events that will ultimately come to define his career, and he could have been forgiven for starting to think that he would always come up short (literally, but primarily figuratively) on such stages.

Last week's event in Florida could hardly be further towards the other end of a spectrum in terms of attention, attendances and money value if it tried - but the circumstances that were presented to Donald created an atmosphere akin to that found in major championships.

And Donald didn't disappear, he delivered. The inner conviction and confidence he should get from such an execution of a plan in both body and spirit has every chance of taking him to that next, final level.

The one fear is that fatigue - Donald has played more events than almost anyone else in the last two years - eventually catches up with him, and causes a hangover just when he's looking to kick on next season. But that seems unlikely.

"I'm very, very excited about my golf," he noted. "It's been a long year. I'm very, very excited about next year and even this off-season about trying to improve.

"You know, there are certain parts of my game that definitely need some improvement.

"There were times where I didn't have my best golf but I still contended, and that excites me for next year. If I can just sharpen up a little bit here and there, obviously more of those being in contentions will turn into wins.

"Obviously the only disappointing part of the year I suppose is not winning a major. But I'll keep persevering and giving myself opportunities."

Cured of Luke Donald disease, it would be a brave man who bets against him taking one of those opportunities over the next few years.

Sergio putts his problems behind him

It's easy to diminish Sergio Garcia's 11-shot victory at the Castello Masters - it took place on his home course, he's won there before - but it's even easier to leap to the conclusion that the enigmatic Spaniard could be back to his very best.

Garcia has spent much of 2011 rediscovering his love of the game, something he finally appears to have achieved (while, not necessarily coincidentally, also finding a bit of stability in his personal life). He has shown regular flashes of his old style throughout the year - flirting with contention at the US Open and Open Championship, nearly winning in Germany - but it was not until he got back on home soil that he managed to put it all together.

The major stain against Garcia's name remains the fact he has yet to win a major, with his suspect putting regularly cited as the reason it hasn't happen - and likely never will. But, as he showed in Castellon, Garcia is no longer the obvious liability he had become with the flatstick - with his stats painting him as a putter somewhere between average and slightly-above-average among professionals.

His grip (a variation on Chris DiMarco's old favourite, 'The Claw') may hardly inspire long-term confidence, but for now the results speak for themselves.

Unlike Donald, who is penalised by the extreme length of most of the host courses, Garcia seems to gain an advantage on the field in the heightened difficulty of major events. Four of the Spaniard's five best finishes on the PGA Tour in 2011 came in four of the five biggest events, an indication that he copes better than others in the most testing of crucibles.

Therefore, if he can keep his current good feeling on and off the course going into 2012, Garcia could be only narrowly behind Donald in the list of potential major winners.

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