Harrington & Garcia looking to open account

Tiger Woods is, of course, the most successful golfer of the season, given that of the three major championships staged so far he has won two. That is close to superhuman, given that it means that of the past 12 majors played he has won seven.

So the questions that inevitably arise at the start of another major are, is he going to win yet again and, if not, who can stop him?

Given that normal human agencies do not seem very effective, and given that this is the country where creative accounting seems to be the norm, it is perhaps time to employ a little of that to see if an obvious deficit can be turned into something resembling a profit.

It is possible to create a table which shows that the best player in majors this year is not Woods but Padraig Harrington. Indeed it is possible to go further and show that Woods does not even come second, that honour going to Sergio Garcia, with Woods and the Open champion Ernie Els only third equal.

Harrington, without really getting the plaudits his golf has deserved, has finished fifth in the US Masters, eighth in the US Open and fifth again in the Open championship. If you add together those placings it gives a total of 18, and if you divide by the number of majors then the Irishman has averaged a sixth place in the 2002 major league.

Using the same mathematics Garcia, with finishes of eighth, fourth and eighth, has an average placing of seventh. Those two golfers are the only two to have been in the top 10 of all three majors this year.

Not even Woods has managed that, his tie for 28th at Muirfield giving him a total of 30 and an average position of 10th. That is the same mark as Els, who has also accumulated 30 points with his placings of fifth, 24th and first. So it is possible to argue that Woods is not all-conquering, or at least it might be possible for the executives of take-the-money Enron to do so.

Tables such as that do not fool Els, though, who admitted on Tuesday that Woods's best beats his best, and they simply would not signify to Garcia, who still has about him the cloak of youthful confidence.

The 22-year-old Spaniard was asked if it was good for golf that someone other than Woods had won the Open. Briefly he looked incredulous that such a question had been asked, then he sought a polite answer. Eventually he said: "I don't know. I would have liked to have won it myself. We are all trying to win so I am always going to put myself in front of Tiger - or anybody else."

He went on: "I know my chances out there. There's no doubt that Tiger's a great player; if not the best ever, close to it. But you've got to realise that I'm four years younger than he is, so I've got time to improve. I know what I can do. I know that if I'm playing well and I'm doing what I have to do, I can beat him."

Garcia came close to beating Woods in this championship at Medinah in Chicago in 1999, the year he hit his incredible shot from behind a tree on to the green. At the end of that week Woods was exhausted; it had taken all his reserves to hold off the challenge.

It seemed that the Spaniard was sure to break through sooner rather than later, but this is the 12th major since then and all he has done is challenge. Is he disappointed not to have won one?

"Yes. I feel like I should have. I feel I have played well enough, but it's not only the playing, everything has to be there, you have to get the good break at the right moment. That can turn a bogey into a birdie. I don't feel I've had that kind of week in a major."

Garcia, then, is confident, rather more so than the bookies, who quote Woods at 15-8 with Garcia, Els and Phil Mickelson all at 16-1.

Last year in this event Mickelson produced a score lower than anyone had ever scored in a major championship, 266, and still lost by one to David Toms. For someone who has now played 41 majors and, despite being one of the most talented players in the world, has yet to win one, that must have been frustrating.

But Mickelson is a consummate diplomat, wise in the ways of giving answers that contain no answer whatsoever. When it was put to him that surely last year rankled, he said: "It would have been more frustrating if I hadn't had a chance to win. I feel like I played very well that week and, if I didn't beat every single player in the field, I played to a level I need to play at to win a major championship. Certainly it was disappointing not to have won but it would have been much more frustrating had I not had a chance to."

Mickelson, like Els, needs more fire in the belly and less psycho-babble in the head.

Whoever wins, though, will have beaten the strongest field in the history of golf. Taking the world rankings as a test of the strength in depth, this week there are no fewer than 98 of the top 100 playing, which beats the previous best, 95, set by this same championship last year.

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