Kaymer leads Ryder revival
Welcome back , gentlemen. For a while there you had us worried. Not you Poults, obviously. We know as soon as there is a whiff of Gleneagles in the air come September you’ll be bug- eyed with excitement once more.
But what about so many of the other miracle makers from that Ryder cup at medinah? They had disappeared so far off the pace you had to get down to the small print in the Ryder cup standings to find them.
Now look at the situation. The fifth most important tournament in the game concluded on Sunday and not only was martin Kaymer (pictured), the man who holed the winning putt in chicago, standing on the 18th green at the Players championship with the trophy, five of his team-mates were placed tied sixth or better.
How nice to see Francesco molinari with a spring in his stride once more and lee Westwood with a sparkle in his eye. Then there is Sergio Garcia, Justin Rose and Rory mc Ilroy, who are all playing so well they will surely pick up at least one big prize between them this summer.
After such a slow start to the campaign for europe’s leading players, has Kaymer’s welcome return from the twilight world that often follows a swing change set the ball rolling? We saw it in the build-up to medinah, where one triumph followed another.
At the start of last week Kaymer was the world’s 61st-ranked player, grotesque given his talents. Now back inside the top 30, the former No 1 was strolling impressively away f rom the f i eld until a 90-minute weather delay stalled his momentum. But the 29-year-old showed his class at the end, holing a 30ft putt for par at the 17th that eventually proved the margin of victory over game veteran Jim Furyk.
It is three years since Kaymer was the game’s leading player. If truth be told, he found all the adulation and the demands on his time hard to handle. But it will be surprising if he doesn’t build on this and leave a legacy over the next 10 years to rival that of his nation’s greatest player, Bernhard langer.
As for the Ryder cup, europe’s team will be finalised at the end of August and what a final few laps we now have in store, with nine of the medinah men back in the mix.
Given what happened back then, we should have guessed they’d leave it late.