Donald targets money-list success as another major opportunity slips by

LUKE Donald has no trouble finding more targets now that the majors have eluded him for yet another year.

When England’s world No 1 starts the FedEx Cup play-offs next week he will be out to make up for being pipped to the £7 million jackpot by Jim Furyk last year.

Donald also has the chance to be the first player to win the money lists in the United States and Europe in the same season.

“It’s certainly a goal,” he said after finishing joint eighth – with world No 2 Lee Westwood – at the USPGA Championship in Atlanta. “That would be a great accomplishment. To be the first would be very special.”

The 33-year-old, who finished five behind after playing the four-hole closing stretch in seven over par on the week compared to the one over of winner Keegan Bradley, is now more than £1.5m ahead of Masters champion Charl Schwartzel in the Race to Dubai standings. But in the States he is only $120,000 in front of Nick Watney and that could go in one shot.

Both Donald and Westwood threatened to get into the thick of the action on both Saturday and Sunday, only to lose ground again. Donald found the water at the short 15th just like Bradley and play-off loser Jason Dufner. “I thought I had to press a little bit hard and obviously I hit a poor shot,” he said. “I just didn’t strike it well enough.

“It’s a missed opportunity again. The positives I see are that I didn’t have my best week this week and I still came reasonably close.

“I know I’ve got the game to compete and win majors, but, again, it’s bitter-sweet. It’s another major gone, another year gone without winning a major. I’m moving in the right way, though. I just need that week where everything falls in place.”

Westwood is five years older at 38 and has played 55 majors now compared to Donald’s 34.

They have now seen two players win at the first attempt – Ben Curtis at Sandwich in 2003 and now Bradley. Before Curtis, nobody had done it since amateur Francis Ouimet at the 1913 US Open.

Westwood’s putting remains the thing that bugs him. He tried a lighter approach to it in Georgia, but still they did not drop often enough.

With so many top-three and top-ten finishes now there is no doubt he has the game, but going so close so often creates its own pressures.

As he headed off to a ten-day holiday in Barbados – his next event is the European Masters in Switzerland from 1 to 4 September – he said: “I have enjoyed playing great for a long time now. But unfortunately when I turn up to majors and don’t win one it’s a disappointing week for everybody it seems – and obviously for me. That’s the sort of level of golf I’m playing at.”

The Swiss event, which will also have Rory McIlroy – arm injury permitting – in the field, is the start of Ryder Cup qualifying and there will be more competition than ever, it seems. Dane Anders Hansen was third at the PGA, Swede Robert Karlsson joint fourth. There are two more names to throw into the mix.

McIlroy, meanwhile, has headed off for a break in order to rest that injured arm. He travelled from Atlanta to link up again with the world No 1 tennis player Caroline Wozniacki, with whom he has been romantically linked, and was yesterday spotted watching her practice at the Western and Southern Open in Ohio.