Major League Baseball season is fast approaching in the United States and the pitchers who seal the deal at the back end of games are called the “closers”.
Regardless of whether the analogy fits for golf, it has been a bad year for nailing down wins across two major tours.
Martin Kaymer coughed up a 10-shot mid-round lead in Abu Dhabi and Charl Schwartzel blew a five-shot overnight lead at the South African Open.
Both are former major winners.
RELATED:
[ — Putter switch playing havoc with Adam Scott and it won’t get any easier at The Masters ]
[ — Patrick Reed seems to relish the criticism and catcalls directed at him ]
[ — Dustin Johnson proves talent again, but does he have mental game to go higher? ]
It has been even uglier on the PGA Tour, where the 54-hole leaders have failed to win in each of the past nine tournaments. World No 2 Henrik Stenson is the latest casualty, inexplicably three-putting two of the last three holes on Sunday to lose to Matt Every at the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
Stenson, the two-time defending champion of the DP World event in Dubai and one of the game’s toughest competitors, joked that he had been “jinxed” when somebody mentioned it to him after the third round.
He had a point. Thinking about it cannot possibly help.
“I didn’t think of it until someone brought it up here yesterday,” Stenson said after the final round.
“I was there until the end.
“You can’t three-putt two holes in a row when it’s a tight ball game.”
Nobody talked about the game’s 54-hole rigours until a few years ago, when Tiger Woods turned many Sundays into walks in the park.
His record of 54 wins in 58 tries, including a 14-1 mark in the major championships, might be the most impressive figure of his career.
The 2015 season has only added an exclamation point to that notion.
Follow us on Twitter @NatSportUAE
