The Open: O’Meara gives Westwood vote of confidence

ALREADY arguably the best player not to have won a major, Lee Westwood now has the unwelcome statistic to perhaps make it official.

A share of third place in the Open Championship means Westwood has a record eight top-three finishes in major championships without winning one, the 40-year-old having matched Harry Cooper’s total of seven between 1925 and 1938 in last year’s Masters.

Westwood took a two-shot lead into the final round at Muirfield only to shoot a closing four-over-par 75, as Phil Mickelson’s brilliant 66 enabled the American to lift the Claret Jug and claim a fifth major title.

It took Mickelson 43 attempts to win his first major – the Open was Westwood’s 62nd – but at the age of 43, Mickelson at least offers hope to Westwood that time is still on his side. The left-hander became the third player over the age of 40 in succession to win the Open after 42-year-olds Darren Clarke and Ernie Els. 1998 winner Mark O’Meara, who was 41 when he won the Masters and Open titles, said: “People expect him to do it and everyone wonders why he hasn’t done it. But there is a lot of luck involved too.

“It takes a lot of skill but it takes timing and luck too and sometimes you can do everything possible that you can control and someone else does something a little bit better.

“Unfortunately for Lee a couple of times that’s happened to him and a couple of times he hasn’t played as well. He is still a young man and has a lot of good years ahead of him. I think you can still be a good player in your 40s, especially as good a ball-striker as Lee Westwood is.”

Westwood’s manager Andrew Chandler believes Westwood was nowhere near his best at Muirfield, despite leading by three shots at one point in the final round.

“Rather than thinking that this was one that got away, I prefer the thought that even despite not bringing his A game and possibly not his B either, Lee still managed to get into contention,” Chandler wrote in a blog. “What we did see from Lee this week was that his putting and short game have improved immeasurably in the last six months and once he gets his long game back on track, he will again be pushing for all the game’s major honours.”