What's the deal with Germany and France?

[Bravo]

I am looking at the USOpen leaderboard and focusing on the nationalities of the participants....

I cannot find a player from either Germany or France. What's up with this? These two countries, along with the UK form the tri-power of Europe, have strong economies lots of wealth...yet there's a dearth of professional players from each.

Look at Sweden. They have four players in the field - and with that weather...they cannot even play in the winter at all.

Of course South Africa has tons of players for a country its size as well as Australia and New Zealand. I guess we can attribute Australia and New Zealand's golfing prowess to their former membership in the British Empire...

What's up with Germany and France? Except for Bernhard Langer in the past 20 years, that's about it for them.

Any thoughts??

[SiberianDVM]

It's the Revenge of Bush.

[kiwi]

It's probably due to the fact that about half the spots in field are made of qualifier's. And the there's only 1 qualifying event in Europe