Jeff Overton's consistent year has him climbing the US Ryder Cup chart

AKRON, Ohio — Even avid golf fans might be surprised to see who is No. 4 in the U.S. Ryder Cup team rankings this week.

Tiger Woods? Nope. He's ninth. Stewart Cink? He's at No. 13.

Try Jeff Overton, hardly the name that comes to mind when you consider the best American players in 2010.

"It's not like I'm Tiger Woods," he said. "Maybe if we could ever win instead of finish second, maybe we'd have a little better chance of (being known)."

Overton is listed so high among U.S. golfers for the Ryder Cup at Celtic Manor because he's played consistently well all year. He's had three seconds and two thirds, barely missing out on his first career win several times.

On Sunday at the Greenbrier Classic, it took Stewart Appleby's stirring 59 in the final round to beat him. The 27-year-old Indiana University graduate also was runner-up at the Zurich Classic and the Byron Nelson.

"This year I've been able to get inside the top three a lot, but I haven't been able to get that win," he said Wednesday, the day before the start of the Bridgestone Invitational. "Hopefully, I'll be able to keep plugging along.

"Like (former British Open champion) Ian Baker-Finch said, 'You keep knocking on the door enough times, eventually something is going to happen.' "

Overton's scoring average is 69.81, third-best on the PGA Tour. He is 12th on the money list with more than US$2.4 million. He's up to No. 47 in the world rankings after starting the year at No. 186.

A native of Indiana, he is the son of a former baseball player and quarterback at Indiana State. He said he gets his competitive fire from his dad.

He also dates an opera singer.

Asked where they met, he laughed and said, "Bloomington, Ind., the No. 1 opera school in America."

Overton said he knows about as much about opera as his girlfriend knows about golf.

For instance, his girlfriend's mother came out to see him play once. He made a bogey and she said, "What did he do? He made a bogus?"

So far this year, he's been anything but bogus when climbing those Ryder Cup charts.

"(Making the team) would be half the goal, and then the next half of the goal would be to figure out a way to go win the USA some points," he said.

That was perhaps the case for Justin Rose for his first decade as a professional. In six full years (and parts of four or five others), he never won on American soil. Second-place finishes at the Texas Open in '06, Bridgestone in '07 and Memorial in '08 not only whetted his appetite for winning, but also increased questions about why he wasn't winning.

Rose turned 30 last week but he's been celebrating all year in the U.S.

Wins at the Memorial and AT&T National have pushed him up the charts in the world rankings. He was 70th to start the year but is now 19th. After years of promise mixed with disappointment, he is considered a threat to win every tournament.

"I said before I started winning that my game was in great shape," he said Wednesday. "I didn't need to do anything different; I didn't need to work on anything.

"I guess it was the patience factor of just letting it happen."