Big dogs with tails between legs

Despite tags as heavy hitters, Spieth, McIlroy, Johnson and Day prove no course takes heed of the world rankings, least of all Royal Troon, observes Kevin Ferrie

THEIR faces and names have been all over Troon this week... except on the leaderboard. With “the big four” the talk of the town coming into the event, the decisions of Rory McIlroy, Jason Day, Dustin Johnson and Jordan Spieth to turn their backs on the Olympic Games were portrayed as something of a disaster for the sport as it seeks to use that stage to promote itself to new audiences.

What has transpired, then, has been a timely reminder that golf is a sport that cannot be dependent on its leading performers to be at the forefront of any competition.

Unlike Novak Djokovic, Andy Murray, Roger Federer and Rafael Nadal, their counterparts in the tennis world whose superiority can be measured in the number of consecutive Grand Slam quarterfinals, semi-finals and finals they have won, it cannot be considered a shock if none of them are in the running for trophies, or even if they are knocked out of contention early.

It is the nature of a contest, which is as much against Mother Nature as it is against any particular rival competitor. As dominant as they at times appeared, even Jack Nicklaus and Tiger Woods failed to feature at the death in many more major championships than they won.

However far back they were, though, any time either strung together a couple of birdies towards the closing stages of tournaments when at their peak there would be murmurings of ‘a charge’, and the rest of the field was likely to be affected.

As we seek to assess the credentials of this modern ‘big four’ in terms of their potential to achieve greatness, the relative ordinariness of their performances in failing to challenge over the first three days at Royal Troon signifies nothing in any wider context, then, about how they still might.

In ridding himself of his nearly-man tag just short of his 32nd birthday at the US Open, the tournament in which a year earlier he had suf- fered his most painful near-miss of all, Johnson offered evidence that his perpetually laidback manner is no mere defence mechanism. He duly generated something of a stir too, yesterday, in making the most telling move from among the chasing pack by picking up three shots on the outward half, before a triple-bogey seven at the dreaded 11th hole almost certainly ended his challenge once and for all.

McIlroy has, meanwhile, repeatedly shown a capacity to bounce back from adversity in accruing as many major championship wins as his three rivals put together, while Day, who has ascended to world No 1 in authoritative fashion, noted reasonably that only Johnson, of their number, had not been afflicted by being in the half of the draw that was worst affected by the Ayrshire weather.

There was, though, a worryingly whiny nature to the comments emanating from the youngest of them, as Jordan Spieth, who had only just made the cut, complained about the level of expectation being placed upon him on the back of last season, when he arrived at the Open on course for a calendar year Grand Slam and missed the play-off at St Andrews by a single shot before also finishing runner-up at the USPGA.

“I think had last year not happened I’d be having a lot of positive questions,” he observed.

“Instead most of the questions I get are comparing to last year and, therefore, negative because it’s not to the same standard, so that’s almost tough to then convince myself that I’m having a good year.

“So I think that’s a bit unfair to me, but don’t feel sorry for me. I’ll still be okay, but I would appreciate if people would look at the positives over comparing to maybe hopefully what would happen to me a few times in my career: a year like last year. It’s happened less than a dozen times to anybody in golf ever in a year, so it seems a bit unfair at 22 to be expecting something like that all the time.

“For me I set the expectations high for myself, but I feel like I’ve been getting a little more frustrated off the golf course than normal.”