Golf-Turnberry blow became a major boost for Westwood
By Mark Lamport-Stokes
THOUSAND OAKS, California, Dec 1 (Reuters) - Lessons learned from the bitterest disappointment of his career at this year’s British Open helped Lee Westwood win his second European Tour order of merit title, the Briton said on Tuesday.
Westwood, who briefly led by two strokes in the final round at Turnberry in July before slipping back into a tie for third, became European number one with victory at the season-ending Dubai World Championship last month.
“It was a very good year for me and Turnberry was a big learning curve,” the 36-year-old Englishman told Reuters while preparing for this week’s Chevron World Challenge.
“I don’t think I’ve ever been as disappointed having played well walking off a golf course as I was in Scotland in July but I tried to make that a positive and what I learned from Turnberry enabled me to win in Dubai and win the money list.”
Westwood trailed Northern Ireland’s Rory McIlroy in the European order of merit going into the season’s final event before charging to an imperious six-shot victory in Dubai with an eight-under-par 64.
“Winning a major is probably the pinnacle of everybody’s career but there was still a lot of pressure on me in Dubai trying to win the money list,” the world number four said.
“I got it right in dramatic fashion, winning by six shots in an event like that when you’re under that kind of pressure.
MAJOR POSITIVES
“It gives you a lot of confidence and hopefully I can feed off the positives from Dubai the next time I’m in a position to win a major championship.”
Westwood, who had slumped to 246th in the world in 2002 after topping the European money list two years earlier, said his second order of merit triumph was probably the more satisfying.
“The first one around was just a nice gradual progression to winning the money list,” the 20-times European Tour winner said.
“This time around, I had obviously been through a lot more things between the two money list wins. I’d seen a few lows that have been well publicised, and it was nice to come back from them and get back to where I was.”
Westwood paved the way to his second order of merit success with a blistering second half of the season featuring 11 top-10 finishes in his last 13 starts.
“I certainly got it moving towards the mid-part of the year, from the French Open onwards,” he said. “I lost a playoff there to Martin Kaymer and then I got my head together.
“I had top-10s nearly every week after that and managed to finish off with a couple of wins, in Portugal and in Dubai. It was great to win the money list again.”
(Editing by Ian Ransom; To query or comment on this story email sportsfeedback@thomsonreuters.com)
((mark.stokes@thomsonreuters.com; +44 20 7542 7933; Reuters Messaging: mark.stokes.reuters.com@reuters.net. For the Reuters sports blog Left Field go to: http://blogs.reuters.com/sport))
