Paul Casey is still chasing his first victory on United States soil, but the evidence is mounting that he might not have long to wait.
While losing the final of the WGC-Accenture World Match Play to Geoff Ogilvy was the closest the 31-year-old has come so far, it is just the latest in a string of impressive displays.
In his last seven starts in the States the Ryder Cup star has now earned over Ј1million and has had five top 15 finishes, including the US PGA and another of the World Golf Championships.
Rory McIlroy was the European who caught the imagination of American golf fans in Tucson, the curly-haired teenager reaching the quarter-finals on his first pro start there, but Casey never trailed until he too fell to the red-hot Australian.
He is up to 13th in the world - victory over Ogilvy would have catapulted him into the top 10 for the first time - and having ended two years without a win in Abu Dhabi in January, the Masters in five weeks' time cannot come quickly enough for him.
"I'm not going to dwell on why I haven't won a PGA Tour event yet," said Casey.
"I do look at it and I try and learn from it, but my focus is from now on.
"I feel very good about my game. It's all right there."
Casey picked up over Ј560,000 for his second place, but on falling at the final hurdle and missing out on the first prize of just under Ј1million he stated: "A little bit bitter-sweet maybe.
"I would have loved to have won. I came up against a guy who was too good, but, having said that, this is a golf course that I felt was slightly awkward for my game two weeks ago and I found a way of getting around it.
"For that I'm proud. I was tired at the beginning of the week as well (he flew from Australia) and showed that I had the energy to get through. That was pretty good.
"So there's a lot of things I take out of this, but there are also things I need to work on. So we move forward."
His next start is next week's WGC-CA Championship in Miami, which is also expected to be the second event of Tiger Woods' comeback.
The majors are the stage on which he most wants to shine, though, and last April at Augusta Casey was lying fourth with a round to go, but crashed to a closing 79 which included calling a penalty on himself when his ball moved on the sixth green.
"That is out of your control and very difficult to handle. That kind of threw me for a couple of holes and that was it," he said after finishing 11th.
Sixth on his Masters debut in 2004 remains his best finish in a major, but he was seventh at Birkdale last July and distant memories now are the rounds of 85 he had at the PGA, Open and US Open earlier in his career.
The last of those came during a slump which followed his controversy comment after the 2004 Ryder Cup that "we properly hate them".
The furore made life difficult for a while, especially for someone who has a home in Arizona and an American wife and coach. But he never came in for the level of heckling aimed at Colin Montgomerie and it is all pretty much forgotten now.
"I'm very grateful to the US," he said rather more tactfully this weekend.
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