Winning anywhere around the world is good. Winning on the PGA Tour is better. Performing miracles for your Ryder Cup team is even better than that.
But it is victories in the major championships that truly defines a golfer’s career. And yet, for some, it remains a bridge too far despite their undoubted quality. Who are the greatest golfers who never quite got over the line?
Let’s find out.
5. Harry Cooper
Although little known in modern times, Cooper a star in the 1920s and 30s and, moreover, he had a remarkable pedigree in the game.
He was born in Surrey in 1904 to parents who were both professionals. His father, Syd, had worked under Old Tom Morris in St Andrews, and his mother, Alice, was even more extraordinary as a very rare woman professional at the time. The family moved to Texas when Harry was young and he claimed his first professional win, in 1923, before he had turned 20.
He was good enough to win 30 times on the PGA Tour including no less than seven of them in 1937 when he ended the year top of the rankings. He would also have played the Ryder Cup except for a bizarre quirk: he couldn’t play for Britain because he didn’t reside there and he couldn’t play for the USA because he wasn’t born there.
He finished top five in a major no less than 11 times including two runner-up finishes in both the Masters and the US Open. A forgotten star of the game and one of its great nearly men.
4. Macdonald Smith
Born in Carnoustie, ‘Mac’ was typical of the many Scottish ex-pats who crossed the Atlantic to expand the game and their own fortunes. He left the UK aged 17 and his first win on the PGA Tour was the 1912 Western Open which many have argued was a major of its time.
In the real things, however, he never lifted the trophy despite mopping up 25 PGA Tour wins (including a second Western Open in 1933). He was a 12-time top five finisher the majors including third on his debut at the 1910 US Open, second in the same event in 1930 and two runner-up finishes in the Open.
His quality was revealed in one of his keenest admirers – the undeniably great Ben Hogan. And his inability to win a major was all the harder to take because his brothers Willie and Alex both won the US Open.
3. Doug Sanders
If Cooper and Smith banged their heads against a locked door time and time again, Sanders did so less often but his final heartbreak is among the saddest in golf history.
The Georgia-born golfer landed his first PGA Tour win as an amateur – the 1956 Canadian Open – and he collected 24 wins on the circuit in all. The first of his eight top five finishes in the majors came at the 1959 PGA Championship when he was second, the first of four runner-up finishes.
That’s impressive enough – albeit without the winning gloss – but it is the final second place that stands above all others because at the 1970 Open in St Andrews he only needed a par at the short par-4 final hole to be triumphant – and he was only 75 yards from the pin after his drive.
Three blows later he had 3-feet to win the Claret Jug. Before his attempt he nervously leaned down to remove debris. And then he wafted his putter at the ball in a manner that left those watching gasping in horror. Poor Sanders was quite clearly embarrassed before the ball had even reached the hole.
After tapping in for bogey he returned next day for an 18 hole play-off against Jack Nicklaus which he lost. So near and yet so far.
2. Colin Montgomerie
The Scotsman won 31 times on the European Tour (the fourth best total of all-time) and he was also an eight-time winner of the Tour’s Order of Merit (a number Rory McIlroy is still chasing down).
More than that, perhaps, is his quality in the Ryder Cup. He was a titan for Europe in the Ryder Cup – and especially magnificent in the singles (eight matches, never beaten).
He had a problem, though: he couldn’t win in America. Not, at least, until his senior career. Americans mocked this gap in his CV and it made life difficult when it came to the majors.
He finished second in the US Open three times, including 2006 when a par at the last would have won it and a bogey would have earned a play-off. He made double bogey after hitting the fairway with his drive. He was also second in the PGA Championship and Open.
Sustained misery, then, and yet in just his fourth major, the 1992 US Open, he was third after setting an early clubhouse target which prompted Jack Nicklaus to congratulate him on victory.
It was premature praise and must still sting. So must wondering what might have happened if he had won so soon in his career…
1. Lee Westwood
The Englishman was good enough to win in America, Europe, Africa, Asia and Australia. He won on all sort of golf course and all sorts of grasses. He topped the DP World Tour rankings, the world rankings and was a star of the Ryder Cup.
But major wins eluded him.
In all, he tallied 11 top five finishes between 2000 and 2019 – and, like Sanders, he spread those near misses across all four majors.
Between 2008 and 2013 he was particularly close to glory, collecting eight top three finishes in just 21 starts.
His greatest run started in late 2009 when he was tied third in both the Open and PGA Championship then opened 2010 with second at the Masters. After T16 at the US Open he was second in the Open.
Yes: four near-misses in just five starts. That concentrated run of agonisingly quality pinches top spot off Montgomerie.
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