Why do English players continue to struggle in The Open Championship?

World number one, Luke Donald missed the cut.

European golf looks to be at it's strongest point for a long time. Four of the last five Ryder Cups have been won by the continent, including the triumph at Celtic Manor in 2010. Furthermore, five of the top ten players in the world now are Europeans.

Closer to home, English golfers are doing even better. Not only are five of the world's top 40 players from this green and pleasant land, but in Luke Donald and Lee Westwood the country boasts the two finest golfers on the planet right now.

True enough, world number 19, Tiger Woods may still be regarded the most talented player of a generation; but truer still, neither Westwood nor Donald have won even a single Major championship between them.

Indeed, that latter point has a certain degree of veracity to it – something that is painfully highlighted when looking at the results of recent Open Championships.

Not since 1992 has an Englishman won the famous tournament (Nick Faldo), and more shocking still, an Englishman has not won the tournament on English soil since 1969 when Tony Jacklin took home the Claret Jug.

Going into today's third round at Royal St Georges, the highest ranked English player is, remarkably, the amateur Tom Lewis. He sits tied 14^th in amongst a posse of world class talent, including former Masters champion, Phil Mickelson.

As for the aforementioned talented duo of Donald and Westwood, well, astonishingly they both missed the cut.

So why is there such a distinct lack of success for English players in this competition?

It is hard to put a finger on precisely what it is, after all the conditions are more or less the same for everyone competing in the tournament. In fact it could be argued that English players should be more comfortable with conditions that they most likely would have grown up in.

Of course, The Open Championship does present a very different challenge to any of the other Major golf tournaments, for it is played out every year on links courses. Courses where, essentially, a player's biggest obstacle is not dense woodland, thick rough or tight fairways, but rather, the wind.

One argument, and very flawed it does seem, is that most of the top players – including England's top hopes – are high ball hitters. It has been suggested many times before that they struggle in the windy conditions. However, three time Open Championship winner, Jack Nicklaus was a notoriously high ball hitter, and as his record suggests, he never had any real difficulty adapting.

As for the argument that the creative 'feel' players struggle in such conditions? Nonsense. The late, great Seve Ballesteros built a career on such play, and he won the tournament three times as well.

There are many arguments out there, and it would take a lifetime to go into any great depth about them all, but it certainly does remain an enigma.

This year, though, it is Northern Irishman, Darren Clarke who leads the tournament going into the weekend, and it now appears he will be the one all British hopes are pinned to. His countryman, Rory McIlroy is still hanging in there too, after a solid round of 69 on Friday to take him to level par for the championship.

But despite all that, the facts remain. It appears to be more of the same old, same old, and it looks as though another year will pass without an Englishman winning the tournament, as the long wait creaks slowly into its third decade.

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