Alun Evans' Golf Majors Book, 2016

THE MOST COMPREHENSIVE SOURCE OF INFORMATION IN PRINT ON THE MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS OF GOLF Alun Evans' exceptional series - now an annual - on the Major Championships, Golf's greatest prizes, progresses into 2016, and, among its many facets across almost 400 tightly-packed pages, looks back in detail on the events of 2015. In hindsight, 2015 may prove to be one of the most significant years in recent golf history. The lingering demise of Tiger Woods as a golfing phenomenon par excellence maybe reached its denouement in 2015. Certainly his three consecutive missed cuts in the Majors following a wan 17th in the Masters, when in 18 years as a professional he had previously only missed three cuts altogether, would suggest so. Added to that his comments, in the wake of two further surgical procedures towards the season's end, seemed to indicate he may not even play again should his troublesome back persist. Although far from being a golfing obituary on perhaps one of the best two or three golfers ever to walk on this planet, it must be questioned: logically, can we see the time when Tiger will win Majors again? Stalled on 14 titles since 2008, 'highly unlikely' seems an understatement. At the end of 2014, Rory McIlroy appeared to be Woods' natural heir apparent, having scooped up four Majors over a relatively short period of time by his mid-20s, and already a paid-up member of the Gang of Three (with Jack Nicklaus and Tiger), the youngest winners of three different Grand Slam titles. Two Top Ten finishes in the Masters and US Open of 2015, although not spectacular by his standards, would not have triggered any alarm bells for anyone interested in the Ulsterman's progress to the top of the World Ranking - if these opening Majors of the season hadn't been won by a comparative unknown, and one over four years younger than Rory. Jordan Spieth had announced himself in 2014, when only 20 years of age, he finished second in the Masters. Some fruits ripen more quickly than others: Spieth's maturity burst forth in rapid time to become the youngest winner of two different Majors since Gene Sarazen in 1922. While Rory was anguishing over an over-exuberant game of football which excluded him from the year's third Major, The Open at St Andrews, Jordan almost, after a late charge, made it three in a row - a feat which would have matched the performances of Ben Hogan in 1953 and Tiger Woods in 2000. His fourth place at the Home of Golf and a second at Whistling Straits in the PGA Championship in the final Major completed a marvellous season nonetheless, one unprecedented by one so young in the annals of Golf, and the Texan had amazingly usurped McIlroy's World No 1 crown. Zach Johnson, who won The Open, picked up his second Major after a period of eight years; Aussie Jason Day, a model of consistency in Majors for several years, finally received his just desserts by claiming the PGA title. So, after a tumultuous year, where some pundits were expecting a post-Tiger void, some assuming Rory would step into his shoes, a completely different vista of the future hove into view. McIlroy would now seem to have a very serious rival indeed, and there is the prospect of perhaps another fifteen years of a kind of Hogan-Snead or Nicklaus-Palmer struggle for supremacy in the sport. And, now that Jason Day has broken his Majors duck, there may even be the mouth-watering possibility of another Big Three, a Triumvirate for the 21st Century, in the making. Follow this story and golf history in the making with full reports, amazing stats - on every Major since 1860, and the players in a series of CVs - period performance charts, even a Hall of Fame Top 100 players, future Majors and 40 pages of records, only in Alun Evans' The Golf Majors Book, 2016. THE ONLY BOOK ANYONE WOULD EVER NEED ON GOLF'S MAJOR CHAMPIONSHIPS