Luke Donald comes in to Sandwich with dominating consistency, Rory McIlroy arrives full of youthful vigour and expectation, while the man who has the best recent Open record of all the three favourites is keeping things deliberately low-key.
Lee Westwood was second at St Andrews last year and third at Turnberry 2009, so there clearly is a logical progression to follow in 2011.
However, although Westwood is well-fancied, he has managed to slip into Royal St George’s almost under the radar.
He also refuses any inducement to build expectation, even if patriotically inclined.
“I consider myself British,” he said when asked if an Open in England was a “little bit more special” for him than the venues in Scotland, and whether it was time to “strike a blow for England” after the major successes of McIlroy and McDowell.
“This is just a very special championship, the biggest in the world as far as I’m concerned. It would mean everything for me to win it.”
He added, “This place is named after St George so you can’t get much more English than that, but it doesn’t mean more to me that it’s being played here. Any Open is a special one.”‘Mentally frustrating’Westwood’s mental strength is admired by many, not least three-time major champion Padraig Harrington, who suggested last week that his Ryder Cup team-mate was the one player he thought on the circuit came closest to dealing with “the fear of failure” that afflicts every professional player at the top of the game.
Although Harrington, contrarily, doesn’t think that Westwood will win here “because it’s not his sort of course”, the world number two thinks differently and reckons his patience is a big advantage.
“It can be mentally frustrating,” he said of the course.
“That’s why people either like or dislike it. For me I’d rank it number one on the rota… this week.”
He added, “You’ve got to love it and get on with it, otherwise you just get in your own way mentally.”
Westwood will not get distracted either by his five top-five finishes in his last seven majors and the suggestion of peers like Colin Montgomerie that, at 40, he may be running out of time.
“I played with Monty on Sunday and wound him up about saying that,” he said.
“Obviously I’m such a finely tuned athlete these days I can go on well into my 40s.”