US Open / Ralph Ellis / 17 April 2012 /

Rankings and prize money are all very well but the difference between a very good player and greatness is still a Major title. Ralph Ellis discusses Luke Donald's hunt for that illusive big breakthrough...

It's funny how everybody thinks footballers are overpaid, but nobody begrudges top golfers their money. Latest figures show that Luke Donald made more than £100,000 a week last year - and that was just his winnings from the European Tour. Throw in what he won in America, add on his commercial endorsements, multiply it by the number you first thought of, and even David Beckham would be looking on with envy.

That's fine for a man who spent 40 weeks as world number one, even if he hasn't yet won a Major, but the riches are scattered right down the order. If, like me, your schoolboy sense of geography can't explain why the European Tour is in China this week, and has been to Bahrain too, then the answers are all in pound coins - 130 million of them, to be exact. That's the value of the 2012 total prize pool. Nobody in the top 115 who kept their cards last year earned less than £250,000.

On the PGA Tour they'd mock those figures. You'd have to follow golf pretty closely to have heard of Carl Petterson, who won the RBC Heritage last week - but the Swede's career winnings top 17 million dollars. He's won five main PGA events now - exactly the same as Donald.

Good luck to them if they can make a tidy living without ever crossing the public consciousness. But most of us want to see the top players justify their status by winning Majors. We're happy Rory McIlroy is number one again because at least he has last year's US Open to his name. We'd like to see Donald do something similar before he takes over at the top again.

Thankfully, it seems that he too feels the same way. His top ranking went last week after a difficult few days at The Heritage, but he doesn't seem to have been unduly bothered. The focus for the Englishman now is tweaking his game a bit to win a Major and surely that can't be far away.

"If I'd had a Premier League ref with me I would have done much better. So many putts that nearly went in that would have been allowed," Tweeted Donald the Tottenham fan yesterday with a dig at Martin Atkinson's ludicrous FA Cup semi-final decision to give the goal that never was. I'd be glad to see him sink a few more putts too, and a better answer than taking out your own dodgy ref is a few more hours on the practice green.

Donald is [22.0] at the moment to make the breakthrough by winning the US Open. Last year as he collected his money he kept insisting that winning a Major didn't matter. If he's changed his mind, and wants to be the next Nick Faldo rather than the next Colin Montgomerie, we'll all be better off.

Five things you might not know about Carl Petterson

1. Born August 1977 in Gothenburg, the second son of his dad Lars, who worked in Volvo's truck division, and is a keen low handicap amateur golfer who taught Carl how to play the game when he was ten.

2. The family moved to England at about that time and spent five years here, before Lars was transferred again by Volvo to Greensboro in North Carolina. Their house was between the first and 18th hole at Starmount Forest CC, and the chance to sneak out and practice helped him win a golf scholarship to North Carolina University, where he roomed with Tim Clark.

3. He was European Amateur Champion in 2000, and won his European tour card that year through qualifying school.

4. He went on a fitness drive in 2009 and lost 30lbs - but it backfired because he dropped 150 places in the rankings and lost the rhythm of his swing. He put himself on a beer and ice cream diet to get the weight, and his form, back again.

5. He met wife DeAnna at college - she was attracted to him because she thought his Swedish accent was English. They married in 2003 and have two children.

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