Peter Williams: Awesome hat-trick from Australia's unsung hero

Robert Allenby is the 37th best golfer in the world and only the fifth best in Australia. Quite how the computer which calculates the official world rankings has emerged with these numbers in the light of Allenby's unprecedented treble of Australia's most important tournaments is beyond me.

But his ranking below Adam Scott, Nick O'Hern, Stuart Appleby and Mark Hensby typifies the general reaction to Allenby's feat. It's been, to say the least, understated.

How many golfers, anywhere, at any level, have won three tournaments in three consecutive weeks in any year? There might have been a few hotshot amateurs or the occasional club hacker but nobody else playing any sort of high level professional tour came close to matching Allenby's triple crown.

For him to win the Australian Open, the PGA and the Masters in three weeks is one of the great feats in world golf this year, perhaps second only to Tiger's first-second-first-fourth sequence in the year's major championships.

Allenby's is one of the all-time outstanding achievements in Australian sport yet the celebration of it in that country's media this week has been drowned out by important matters like whether cricketers should be allowed to sledge each other, or if the Kangaroos only lost to the Kiwis because they were on the drink.

It's not as if Allenby beat three weak fields to win these tournaments. At various times over the three weeks, he saw off all of those four players ranked above him, along with five other Australians currently inside the world's top 100 and, at the PGA, the current US Open champion too.

He posted some great numbers. He was 17 under to win the Masters at Huntingdale, 18 under around Coolum for the PGA and four under at Moonah Links.

While he might have staggered home in the wind at the Australian Open and was gifted his playoff win at the Masters when Bubba Watson missed a short putt, his finish at Coolum was nothing short of brilliant. To hit that eight iron, to a tight pin beside the water, only a metre from the hole when he needed a birdie was outstanding.

What's more, he arrived for this sequence of Australian events under an injury threat because of a painful, and probably arthritic, hand injury. He was receiving treatment on course during the third round of the Open and said he might not be able to make it for the final day. He started each of the subsequent weeks saying that he possibly wouldn't start because of injury. Yet he proved, again and again and again, there is no anaesthetic quite like victory.

He also reinforced his reputation as a man of steel who's a proven winner under the cosh. During his 14-year pro career, Allenby's now been in nine playoffs. He's won them all. But he is not the world's most charismatic player. With his eyes mostly hidden behind sunglasses, and displaying an occasional outburst of a famously fiery temper, Allenby is not a golfer universally loved by thronging galleries. That more than anything explains the underwhelming public reaction to his wins.

Yet what he's done these past three weeks is an absolutely staggering achievement that neither Norman or Elkington or Grady or Baker-Finch, or any other modern-day Aussie golfing great, could match in their prime.

These latest victories are the 17th, 18th and 19th of an illustrious golfing life and represent, to this stage anyway, the pinnacle of his achievements.

Don't let a computer fool you. Right now Robert Allenby is, by some distance, the best player in Australia.