Lawrie climbs to highest spot ahead of his Ryder Cup revival

Although the 43-year-old Scot did not play last week his ranking improved from 29th to 27th.

Next week’s match in Chicago involves 24 of the top 35 players in the world, 17 of whom also compete this week at the Tour Championship in Atlanta.

All 12 of the American side have made it through to the final leg of the FedEx Cup play-offs, plus, from Europe, world No 1 Rory McIlroy – he leads the race for the $10m bonus – Lee Westwood, Luke Donald, Justin Rose and Sergio Garcia.

Spain’s Gonzalo Fernandez-Castano won the Italian Open and climbs from 45th to a career-high 37th. Malton’s Simon Dyson is 49th.

The 2012 Ricoh Women’s British Open at Hoylake will be remembered for the awful weather – gusts so strong on Friday that play was cancelled and wind and rain on Sunday so bad that the action had to be halted briefly again.

But South Korean Jiyai Shin’s main memory will be of her amazing nine-stroke victory, the second biggest margin in the event. It was a historic triumph too – the first time Asian women have won all four majors in one season.

That also makes it seven in a row for them. The run was started by Taiwan’s world No 1 Yani Tseng last year and continued by four different Koreans and also China’s Shanshan Feng.

Eight of the world’s top 10 women golfers are Asian, a remarkable situation when you think that there is not one in the men’s top 35 and only one major winner ever – Korean YE Yang at the 2009 US PGA Championship.

Shin said: “Before I thought my skill was not good for links, but finally I have great tempo in my swing and I think this course was made for me.”

There can be few majors which finished with such a small crowd watching, but it was 7.15pm by then and most of the fans had been driven away by the weather.