GOLF: In more than one way, this has been a strange old golfing year, writes Philip Reid at Rochester, New York.

The first three majors have produced rookie winners and, if the wins by Mike Weir in the US Masters and Jim Furyk in the US Open didn't cause seismic movement to the earth's surface, the shock victory of a previously unknown American, Ben Curtis, in the British Open did. The golfing order had been turned on its head, and all pre-ordained notions about who could and would win a major were thrown out.

So, what do we make of this final major of the year, the US PGA at Oak Hill Country Club? Will it provide an opportunity for the old order to restore itself? A chance for those players who believe they should have nabbed a major title in 2003 but didn't to receive redemption?

Or, in this year of the first-timer, will the sequence be maintained? Ironically, of all the majors, the PGA is the one historically most likely to produce a first-time winner: 12 of the last 15 championships have gone to players who haven't won a major. Yet, the examination the course here presents is one that offers a genuine opportunity for those who know what it takes to win majors but who have failed thus far this year to finally make the grade.

It's a course where the driver is vitally important, where anyone who finds the rough will pay the price, and where approach shots to greens surrounded by rough more akin to a US Open set-up are equally important.

However, as Padraig Harrington, who is one of three Irishmen in the field, along with Darren Clarke and Paul McGinley, observed, it is what happens once you reach the putting surface that matters most of all.

"I think the guy who putts the best is always going to have a good chance. Putting is of extreme importance, and I don't think the winner will win if he doesn't putt well," he said.

In short, every area of a player's game will be examined, with the course demanding shots to be shaped left-to-right and right-to-left. That is how it should be.

This part of upstate New York has suffered heavy rainfall for much of the past month, which has left the course playing longer than its 7,134 yards (par 70). In practice, players were getting virtually no run off their drives and, on some of the longer par fours, particularly the 17th and 18th holes, some were obliged to hit fairway woods for their approaches.

Who can win? "I think if you put any of our top-10 guys on any golf course, over the long haul they are going to do well," insisted Furyk.

"The best players are going to adapt to all of the situations and conditions and they are going to play well in all arenas. Tiger is a perfect example. He plays well where you have to shoot 20-under and he plays well when you have to shoot even par.

"He plays well at the US Open, and he plays well at the British Open. He has a well-rounded game, and that's one of the reasons why he is the best player in the world."

Ah, Tiger. Of course, and as usual, the spotlight has fallen on him more than any other; but for a different reason. Woods, the world number one, is without a major this year. Should he fail to win here, it will be the first time since 1998 that he'll have gone a full season without winning a major.

To some, that would be more cause for a seismic event than even Curtis's unlikely win at Sandwich.

Winning here, however, would put Woods with Walter Hagen as the only players to win at least one major for five consecutive years. And Woods's mark of 27 consecutive cuts in major championships - he has qualified for the weekend in every major he has played as a professional - is testimony to his consistency.

Time after time, he gives himself the opportunity to win; which is why only the insane would dismiss Woods's hopes of ending what some are calling his "majors drought".

Woods, though, is not the only one not to win a major this year. What of Ernie Els? Or Vijay Singh? Or Davis Love? And more than a hundred others.

As Els, in attempting to rationalise how Woods might be feeling, remarked, "this not winning a major for maybe a year or two might leave Tiger feeling a little bit disappointed . . . (but) you know, he might as well join the queue. We would all like to go out there and win major championships but it is not always going to work out for you. Some people, some great players, go through their entire careers without winning one."

For Harrington, a top-10 player in the world for the best part of a year, that's something he would rather not have apply. Whether his time has yet arrived, however, is a different matter.

On Tuesday evening, the Dubliner could be seen in a secluded part of the range working away on his game and, yesterday morning, watched attentively by his sports psychologist Bob Rotella, he was in the exact same position.

If sharpness can be found on the range, then Harrington's diligence should have found it by the time he tees off in the first round.

As for the gap that once separated Woods from everyone else, Harrington has observed a change in philosophy among his playing peers. "Before, I think there was an attitude, you know, that you had to play really well to beat Tiger. But, now, players are taking the attitude, 'well, I'll just play my own game and let him play well if he wants to beat me'. They are putting the emphasis back on Tiger, whereas before Tiger had the emphasis on the opposition. Players are saying, 'if he plays great and he wins, fine, but let's see him do it', rather than the other way around."

It was a year ago, in this very championship, that Rich Beem - who started the sequence of first-time major winners - held off Woods down the stretch to win the title. Weir, in the Masters, and Furyk, in the US Open, followed, before Curtis did the seemingly impossible and won a major, in the British Open, at the first attempt.

As always, Woods, a four-time winner in his limited schedule this year, is the player to beat. Recent history, though, shows that the aura of infallibility is not what it once was . . . and the odds, more than ever it seems, are stacked in favour of one of the other 155 players in the field taking the title.

Who that will be is the million dollar question. "A good ball-striker will do well this week," insisted Els. That assertion only limits the field marginally, for they are all good ball-strikers.

It's the player who also possesses mental sharpness that will be able to complete the job. Only four days play over a terrific championship course will supply the ultimate answer.