It’s the one title no one really wants — best player without a major championship.
Lee Westwood has had a Hall Of Fame career — never won a major.
Ditto for Scotland’s Colin Montgomerie — Hall Of Fame career — never won a major — until he reached senior status.
Which brings us to 2022 and as we head for a new season, we once again throw out the age-old question — who is the best player without a major?
For the longest time it was Rickie Fowler. He contended often but fell off the map the past two seasons. Now it will be a task for Rickie simply to make it back to the winner’s circle again.
So we throw out two current, big names — world No. 4 Patrick Cantlay and world No. 6 Xander Schauffele — both are accomplished players — both are majorless.
Cantlay finished the 2021 season with a flurry and won the FedEx Cup in the process. Schauffele? He didn’t win on the PGA Tour in either calendar year 2020 or 2021.
So at this moment, it appears Cantlay is the best without a major.
Another name in that hunt is world No. 15 Tony Finau.
Will one of those three break through this year?
Odds have to favor Cantlay.
6 Comments
baxter cepeda
Good question.
First rickie is still in the convo imo. It’s been a while but we know he had top 5s in all 4 majors in one year. And he is showing signs recently that his game is coming back.
Tony and Xander have both had better finishes in majors than Cantlay; to be fair cantlay has lost quality time to injury and personal issues.
But still Tony has top 5s in all 4 majors.
Xander has top 3s in 3 and a 10th at the PGA.
Pat has top 15s in all 4; only 1 top 5, 3rd at the pga, and 2 top 10s. He still has some things to prove which rickie, Tony, and Xander have already shown.
But I agree if I had to bet I would take Cantlays pedigree and recent form over those 3 great players and people.
Tom Edrington
Rickie has to play his way back just to win a regular Tour event, much less a major and I believe he’s got a way to go
baxter cepeda
Yea but he also seems to be where Jordan was around this time last year. I definitely would buy some stock in Rick right now.
Tom Edrington
Sure hope Rickie makes a Spieth-like comeback…..as we’ve said before, Rickie’s the “Sara Lee” of the Tour and “Nobody Doesn’t Like Sara Lee”
baxter cepeda
Such a nice young man.
But there is one key difference between Fowler and Spieth worth noting:
Spieth had multiple majors before his slump while Fowler had none. Despite all those great major finishes, once Fowler does get back to his old self he will still have to find that something that was holding him back from major wins, which is tough because that search is what derailed him in the first place.
Tom Edrington
Can’t disagree with that, Baxter.