The decade in golf: NCG’s most unexpected major win

We look back on who rocked our major world the most in terms of throwing in an unforeseen big one…

Steve: Darren Clarke at Royal St George’s. Are you seriously telling me you’d have plumped beforehand for a 42-year-old whose only win the last three years had been at the Iberdrola Open? Just shows you that dreams can come true.

Dan: For many reasons, I think it has to be Sergio Garcia winning the Masters. For a start, most of us had sadly concluded he was unlikely to win a major.

And if he was going to win one then there was absolutely no chance it would be at Augusta. He had sulked, stropped and scowled his way around the place for years – and it isn’t difficult to tell when Sergio is unhappy about something.

Coming down the stretch it just seemed inevitable that he would come up short and Justin Rose, with his exemplary Masters record, would emerge with the Green Jacket. But that’s not how it worked out.

Mark: Zach Johnson winning the 2015 Open was pretty out there.

This was the week where plenty of us were dreaming of the third leg of the Grand Slam and then we got Johnson edging out Oosthuizen and Leishman in extra holes with Spieth and Day one short of the play-off.

Johnson is a stellar player but most of us had put him neatly in the box marked ‘One and done’ thanks to a sensational wedge game. He didn’t fit our photofit of an Old Course champion but the record book says otherwise.

Alex: If Hinako Shibuno doesn’t sweep this award then I don’t know who will. 

I’m going to write this in capital letters because it needs the added emphasis: SHE HAD NEVER PLAYED A TOURNAMENT OUTSIDE HER NATIVE JAPAN AND SHE CAME HERE AND WON THE WOMEN’S BRITISH OPEN.

Not only that, she did it against a seasoned veteran in Lizette Salas and all the time had a beaming smile on my face.

She’s just 20 and doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, but she’s just rattled in a 10 footer for birdie to win her first major and hasn’t stopped giggling throughout.

Hinako Shibuno is your new favourite golfer.

— Alex Perry (@AlexPerryNCG) August 4, 2019

There’s a reason she was No. 3 in our 2019 Player of the Year rundown…

What major win surprised you the most from the past decade? Let us know in the comments below or you can tweet us.