The British adversary golfers from abroad can never take lightly was in aggressive form again at Royal Birkdale yesterday but nobody could be confident that the weather’s rumbustious challenge would be matched in intensity by a generation of home players who have yielded meekly for nearly a decade to foreign domination of The Open.

Though we are constantly being assured of how much young talent is produced by the game in this country, digestion of the cheerful tidings is made difficult by the awareness that no Briton’s name has been engraved on the Claret Jug since Paul Lawrie from Aberdeen emerged as champion after four days of drama mingled with farce on an eccentrically prepared course at Carnoustie in 1999. And reluctance to let hype about perceived potential blind us to a dismal scarcity of achievement is instantly reinforced by a glance at what has been happening lately in the other major championship that not so long ago was bolstering our right to think of ours as a powerful golfing nation.

No player from these parts has won The Masters in the past dozen years, whereas there were five British victories between 1988 and 1996, three for Nick Faldo and one each for Sandy Lyle and Ian Woosnam. And in the six years from 1987 to 1992 Faldo also claimed The Open title three times. Obviously his extraordinary gifts imposed a magnificent distortion on the historical record. We must remember that between the end of the second world war and his first success in The Open, the trophy finished in the hands of overseas golfers on all but five occasions: Fred Daly (1947), Henry Cotton (1948), Max Faulkner (1951), Tony Jacklin (1969) and Lyle (1985). So perhaps it is unfair to burden the present crop of hopefuls with comparisons invoking the Faldo era. But the invitation to do so is implicit in all the frequently voiced suggestions that they had been inspired by his example and were ready to prove themselves legitimate heirs.

Such optimism has naturally been fed by Europe’s splendid run in the Ryder Cup but team glory is never a reliable guide to the individual tournament performances that represent the essence of professional golf. That truism is starkly reflected in recent statistics. No European has worn the Masters green jacket since Jose Maria Olazabal in 1999 and it took the triumph of Ireland’s Padraig Harrington at Carnoustie last summer to end a similar drought in The Open. These facts amount to uncomfortable reading when we recall that in the 20 years from 1980 onwards Europeans won the Masters 11 times and The Open seven (and that’s not counting the first of Seve Ballesteros’s three Opens in 1979).

The decline in the continent’s impact on the majors has been both steep and sustained.

And before a ball was struck in earnest on Thursday we were b o u n d t o h a v e doubts about how upbeat we could be concerning the prospects of bucking the trend at Royal Birkdale (the eight Opens so far played on the great Lanca-shire links have been monopolised by America and Australia). Nor were the misgivings unfounded. As the field battled through howling winds in the third round yesterday - though at least with sunshine replacing the driving rain that had contributed to the extreme miseries of the first morning - the majority of Europe’s most fancied contenders were desperately adrift of the pace being set (at several shots over par) by KJ Choi of Korea and the miraculous 53-year-old Australian Greg Norman, who was somehow managing in the main to look almost as impressive as he did when twice taking possession of the Jug in 1986 and 1993.

Harrington’s combination of technical brilliance and unbreakable will enabled him to share the lead, fall back, and then match strides with the front runners once more. The prechampionship betting favourite, Sergio Garcia of Spain, had appeared to be on the very edge of contention when he finished yesterday at nine over par. But as scores ballooned he was entitled to believe his hopes were still alive. No such comfort could be extended to the widely touted Englishmen Lee Westwood and Justin Rose, who were terminally submerged in massive deficits to par. Birkdale’s efforts to summon up gales may have guaranteed a hellish experience for the players but the fluctuations created were so irresistibly entertaining that absence from one of my favourite events in the sporting calendar (because of a fractured ankle) started to seem close to an advantage as I absorbed every new surge of excitement from television.

Amid the mayhem inflicted by the gusting hostility of the weather, conditions hideous enough to raise the possibility of a suspension of play as balls moved from their marked positions on a couple of greens, nothing was more intriguing than the determined attempt of Ian Poulter to justify at last his noisy insistence that he is capable of reaching the heights as an international competitor. Until now, in the biggest events, his deeds haven’t come anywhere near the extravagance of his dress or of boasts unforgettably epitomised by the declaration that, apart from Tiger Woods, he rated nobody in modern golf higher than himself. However, his ability has never been in question and over the past three days the strengths of his game, and especially the purity of his putting stroke, granted him prolonged prominence as the most threatening Englishman.

But by last night he was sliding back into the pack and we were left wondering if the BBC commentators would continue to talk so admiringly about the depth of his self-belief. To some of us, the claims Poulter makes for himself sometimes sound as convincing as the utterances of the kind of deluded soul who tells you his day job is being Napoleon. Still, he brings quite a splash of brightness to the fairways and I certainly have no desire to see him make a forlorn retreat from Birkdale.

Wrong port in a storm

BY NOW Sandy Lyle may be feeling a bit like those people in old horror films who flee from a storm and take shelter in a haunted house. With his golf becoming as wild as the weather at Royal Birkdale on Thursday, the winner of the 1985 Open decided after only 10 holes of this year’s championship that he would call a halt to his 11-overpar sufferings and head for warmth and comfort. Some say quitting was just common sense, that talk of the professional obligation to soldier on is humbug. But does the big man himself agree, or is his head already a haunted place?

Sad to see the grand old game caught out

CAMERA evidence in cricket is sometimes inconclusive but, undoubtedly, what we saw in a dire incident at Headingley on Friday was a player’s conscience being put under surveillance and found sadly wanting. Almost as soon as AB de Villiers stopped shamelessly celebrating a catch that would have dismissed Andrew Strauss early in the second Test of the England-South Africa series, screened replays were making the fielder’s behaviour look as sleazily offensive as the antics of a pickpocket recorded on CCTV. De Villiers had clearly allowed the ball to hit the turf between his hands and then, in attempting to obscure the blunder, had scraped the ball along the grass. If it had spent any more time on the ground it might have qualified for a postcode. The excuse advanced subsequently was that De Villiers imagined the ball had simply jumped through the air from his right hand to his left but if he did he must have less sensitivity of touch than would be expected of somebody wearing boxing gloves.

“That’s as bad as I’ve seen,” said Sir Ian Botham in the commentary box. “How you can possibly claim that is beyond me.” Naturally, after the replays had testified, Strauss was permitted to continue his innings. But the day’s distressing controversy didn’t end there. When South Africa were batting, Hashim Amla appeared to have been caught by Michael Vaughan until the camera intervened again to suggest the ball had been grounded. Amla, too, having received unseemly encouragement from his coach and captain to contest the dismissal, was reinstated at the crease and the South Africans apparently felt the two sides finished equally culpable in the matter of catches-that-never-were. But, in this nonEnglish observer’s view, Vaughan’s was a far more ambiguous case (many felt his fingers stayed underneath the ball) and the depressing memories of Friday will centre on De Villiers. Obviously, however, all the competing nations are guilty of coarsening cricket’s values. The great old game’s most important boundaries used to be those that were least tangible.