Singh leaves it all too late

As a quiz question, it would probably be tougher than the one about who ended the streak. Instead, ask who was the last player to win a major before Tiger Woods got started? And the answer, Vijay Singh, winner of the 2000 US Masters, walks towards us with the look of a man who has found a gold bar only to discover that it's fool's gold!

"Ah, I've just said to my caddie, "why have a round like that when you can't win?"' said Singh, who discovered his form too late. Although he finished his title quest with a final round 64 for a total of two-over-par 282, the Fijian - who was among the first to arrive here at Southern Hills to prepare for the championship - is only concerned about winning and can't even find too much comfort from bringing the course to its knees.

For players at this level, their seasons are judged by what happens in the majors. And the disappointment, despite the fine finish, is etched on his face. "I'm really disappointed. I came in here with such high hopes and, to be honest, I played really good all week. But when the putts don't go in, then you can't win. I was playing better than I shot the last three days so I went back home and analysed my golf and I wasn't hitting that many bad shots," he insisted.

Singh looks like one of the game's top players. No one stays as long on the range or the putting green as the man from the Pacific and, so, even though he leapfrogged over many players in the field, there is a overriding sense of underachievement about his week. "Do you know, I probably took things too seriously this week. This was a championship that I really, badly wanted to win. When I got into it, however, I started to analyse my game too much and I probably should have enjoyed it a bit more. I was a bit more casual today and had more fun out there."

Yesterday, he relaxed, and played like someone who could have won - if only the 64 had come on Thursday, and not on Sunday when he was too far back to really think about taking the prized silverware.

Nevertheless, he constructed a pretty remarkable round that was kick-started with a 15-foot birdie putt on the third and, then, on the seventh he hit a nine-iron approach to three feet on the seventh. On the ninth, he demonstrated his scrambling qualities - and his creativity - when, after hitting his drive into the trees on the right, he scooted a recovery shot up the slope onto the green and two-putted for par.

The murmurs of what he was doing really got going, though, when he followed with back-to-back birdies on the 10th and 11th, where he holed putts of eight feet and 15 feet respectively. When he bogeyed the 12th and 14th, he bounced back on each occasion with birdies. And then added further birdies on the 16th and 17th. His only par on the back nine came on the last, where he had a 25-footer for birdie but left the putt four feet short.

So, the man who had been the last player to win a major before Woods got going with his four-in-a-row ponders what might have been, and then comes back to tell us that it is not bad for golf that Tiger hasn't won again. "He can't win them all . . . he's only human. It's good to see other guys challenging in majors."