When Englishman Tony Jacklin won the 1969 Open Championship at Royal Lytham it was regarded as a staggering achievement by a single minded and extremely confident golfer.

American superstars dominated the game and there was barely a sprinkling of non-Americans at the top levels of the game. Jacklin, along with South African star, Gary Player, and Australians Bruce Crampton, Bruce Devlin and Peter Thomson were the best of the ‘foreigners'.

There was no official world ranking but the American money list was simply, with a few aforementioned exceptions, full of Americans.

Jacklin's win was followed seven years later not by a win but a second place finish in The Open at Royal Birkdale. Spaniard Severiano Ballesteros' brilliant play was a portent of what was to come.

Seve's contemporaries, Bernhard Langer, Nick Faldo, Sandy Lyle, Ian Woosnam and Jose-Maria Olazabal raised the level and the expectations of European golf to an almost undreamed of level and their success in major championships, and the Ryder Cup, gave those coming behind a belief that they could do well at the very top levels of the game.

Tiger Woods, at the end of the 1990s, replaced Nick Faldo and Greg Norman as the game's dominant player but anyone who looked just below Woods could see Europe was continuing to produce first-class players.

Woods' fall from the top of the game is well-documented and the continual dissection of his swing and his game is now getting quite tiresome and a distraction from the fine play of others.

At the World Match Play Championship in Arizona, which ended on Monday morning, Luke Donald and Martin Kaymer fought out an all-European final and for those who care about the rankings they make for some interesting reading.

Kaymer, despite losing to Donald, ascended to the top position. Lee Westwood fell a single place to No.2, Donald moved to No.3 and US Open champion Graeme McDowell is fourth.

Woods is next but also inside the top 20 are Europeans Paul Casey (7), Rory McIlroy (9), Ian Poulter (13), Robert Karlsson (17) and the aging Spaniard Miguel Angel Jimenez (20) - nine in total.

The game has never been more global and while the Americans still assume their tour is the only place anyone should want to play, the European Tour now hosts events all over the world. There is a good argument to suggest that the enormous variety of both course and condition has expanded the skills of those who chose to participate in the world game.

The non-travelling American - as always the norm rather than the exception - plays terrific golf at home but the conditions vary hardly at all from week to week and, as a consequence, the ‘foreigners' have developed more rounded games. They have also learned the American style of power golf so demanded by the golf courses of the US Tour.

Our players, too, have been a part of the swing that has moved the balance of power from America. They, too, have learned to play the typical American course but, by developing their games initially in the wind of our coastal courses with their firm green and difficult conditions, there is an added dimension to their talents.

Woods will come back but the game is irrevocably changed and that is a good thing.