GOLF/ Players Championship: So, just who are these young guns? Those twenty-somethings earmarked as golf's next generation of major winners.

Since his win here at the TPC at Sawgrass a year ago, Adam Scott has seemed a player capable of becoming a major champion, while Sergio Garcia - only 25 years old, although it seems he has been around an aeon - Luke Donald and, more recently, Graeme McDowell are also being touted as likely lads.

For Scott, last year's Players Championship - when he dunked a six-iron approach into the lake that runs all the way up the 18th hole, but still made bogey on that 72nd hole to forge a one-shot winning margin over Padraig Harrington - was a coming of age. It confirmed all the promise, all the comparisons with Tiger's swing, and instilled a new-found belief in his own destiny.

Yesterday, as he prepared to defend the biggest title of his career, Scott talked of even greater things. "I have no doubt in my mind that I've got the ability to win a major, and I think that comes mostly from winning this tournament last year. This is as good a field as any major gets, and to come out on top gives you a lot of confidence.

"I've always said I don't put too much pressure on myself in the majors, and I still kind of take that attitude, but I'm probably going to be tougher on myself (this year) than I have in the past. My results haven't been great, and it's disappointing not to perform well."

If he hasn't exactly contended in majors just yet, Scott's form this season would indicate that he has evolved into a golfer finally ready to make his mark.

Although his sole "win" of the year, in the weather-curtailed Nissan Open, which was reduced to 36 holes, doesn't actually count as official, the Aussie lies fifth on the US Tour moneylist with $1,394,128 in earnings and is ninth in the world rankings.

Now, he's got to the stage where he is ready to become a seriously big player. "The difference between myself and the top players? It is mental and there is also a physical difference, but mainly mental. It's probably experience and maturity. Experience plays a big part and the difference is probably an extra 10 years of them being out here that they know what they're on about and can deal with the situations a little better.

"That's what I believe is the difference between me and the number one position," said Scott.

A couple of notches above him in the world rankings is Garcia, at seventh, but the Spaniard has - thus far - struggled to live up to his own expectations in the big tournaments. He hasn't won a major, yet, and the Players has proven to be a troublesome beast. In five appearances at Sawgrass, he has only one top-five finish (in 2002) and the other outings resulted in two missed cuts, a tied-50th place and a tied-53rd finish.

When asked yesterday if he'd been working on anything in particular on the practice range, he responded: "My driver, my mid irons, short irons, chipping, putting."

Things haven't actually gone that bad for Garcia, apart from his putting which has proven to be a real problem. Although he ranks fourth for greens in regulation on the US Tour, Garcia trails 183rd in putting. The old adage of "drive for show, putt for dough" takes on a real meaning for him.

"I've been struggling," Garcia conceded. "I've been putting so-so for quite a while now . . . the problem is more of a consistency thing. Like, I have rounds where I putt quite well and there are rounds where I putt poorly. So I just somehow need to close that gap a little bit. If I manage that, I have a chance of winning. But it's something I have got to work on."

There are no such problems, it seems, for McDowell who has adapted extremely well to life on the US circuit.

Yesterday he played the course for the first time. On the 17th, he later acknowledged, the Portrush man took a second longer than normal on the top of his backswing to take in the view to the island green before promptly putting his wedge shot to 10 feet.

For his debut appearance in the Players, McDowell has been given a first-round tee time (6.10pm Irish time) off the first alongside Tim Clark and Dennis Paulson; Darren Clarke starts his first round (5.30pm) off the first with David Toms and Heath Slocum, while Padraig Harrington starts off the 10th (1.20pm) alongside Rod Pampling and Jay Haas.

When it was put to Clarke why Irish players should, all of a sudden, be making such an impact on the US Tour, he replied matter-of-factly, "because we're all good players".

Indeed, the level of expectation has been raised, not least by McDowell who is looking even beyond this week's Players Championship for big things from the Irish players. "It'd be great to get a major victory from somebody, one of us," he said. "It's long overdue (since Fred Daly won the British Open in 1947) and I think it is going to come not far in the distant future. I won't be surprised if it happens very quickly.

"I'm happy to be catching up with these guys now and I feel like I am as good as them and that I can compete with the best players in the world now."

Such confidence from McDowell would indicate a subtle change in the Irish psyche. No longer the underdog, maybe?