He is the player who ended Tiger Woods’ record 281-week reign as world number one but he never won a major championship

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For golf fans of a certain age, there seemed to be a period where Tiger Woods being the world number one was simply set in stone, with Woods spending more than 13 years in top spot across his career.

While the world rankings come with a significant asterisk against them these days, they certainly did help show just how dominant Tiger Woods was for so much of his career. The 15-time major champion has spent a total of 683 weeks at the top of the rankings.

Unsurprisingly, that is considerably more than anyone else. Greg Norman is second for most weeks spent at the top at 331.

In fact, Woods’ longest run without being knocked off top spot is not far off Norman’s entire stint. Woods spent 281 weeks in the number one spot between June 2005 and October 2010. It says everything about his dominance that he missed the large majority of 12 months between 2008 and 2009 and still did not lose top spot for another 18 months.

The player to end Tiger Woods’ record run as world number one

And with that, Lee Westwood has secured his spot in golfing folklore, having been the man to bring an end to Woods’ record run.

Westwood has been an incredible servant to European golf having won for the first time on the European Tour nearly 30 years ago at the 1996 Scandinavian Masters. He has won the Order of Merit title on three occasions, including in 2020.

Remarkably, Westwood fell out of the top 100 in the world rankings in 2002. He went into that year’s Ryder Cup in 148th place in the standings having been 20th when the matches were initially meant to be played one year earlier.

But he fought his way back. He was 41st in the world rankings by the time of the 2004 Ryder Cup.

The proudest achievement of Lee Westwood’s illustrious career

Westwood, unfortunately, is a leading name in the discussion of the best players never to win a major. He certainly had a fair share of close calls, having finished as a runner-up at The Masters on two occasions, while he was also second at the 2010 Open Championship. He has 12 top fives in the sport’s four biggest events.

So perhaps it is no surprise that Westwood picked out reaching world number one as the proudest achievement of his career in an interview earlier this year, noting that it was particularly special to take the title off of Woods.

Westwood would spend 17 weeks in top spot before being overtaken by Martin Kaymer. The Englishman would then return for another five weeks before Luke Donald reached the summit in May 2011.

Obviously, he may have wished that he spent longer at number one. But no-one can take away the fact that Westwood can say that he was, for a time, the best golfer on the planet – and achieved it by nudging Tiger Woods aside after a record run.