IN 1987 Ian Woosnam won the Jersey Open, the Madrid Open, the Scottish Open, the Trophee Lancome, the World Match Play Championship, the Hong Kong Open, the Sun City Million Dollar Challenge, the World Cup individual and team (alongside David Llewellyn) trophies and was a star performer in the European Ryder Cup side that won for the first time on US soil at Muirfield Village. By almost any measure, the then 29-year old Welshman was the best player in the world that season.
And yet. The following June, when Curtis Strange defeated Nick Faldo in a play-off for the US Open title, Woosnam was watching at home on television. No, he hadn’t missed the cut in America’s national championship; he simply hadn’t met any of the exemption criteria through which…
