Time heals Westwood’s wounds at St Andrew’s

IT IS a good job Lee Westwood has changed his mind about St Andrews — the course he described 10 years ago as “not in the top 200 in Fife”.

A fondness for the Home of Golf could help Westwood take top spot on the European money list this weekend and finally break his major duck next summer.

“I do enjoy it now,” said Westwood before his final practice round for the £3 million Alfred Dunhill Links Championship — a celebrity pro-am played at Carnoustie and Kingsbarns as well as St Andrews.

“When you’re young and you just bash the ball and you hit a slope and it goes miles away, little things like that tend to irritate you.

“As you get older, you learn to appreciate the subtleties and I’ve done that over the years.

“And it sort of always helps when you win around somewhere!”

Westwood’s victory in the event came in 2003 and he joked that week: “It’s in my top 100 now.”

Six years on, he says: “St Andrews as a whole package is one of my favourite venues — the whole town is buzzing during the week.

“The course is a little bit unfortunate because people can’t get down the middle of it and so you don’t get quite the same atmosphere from the spectators, but it’s one of the venues I look forward to the most.”

Winning The Open next July on the 150th anniversary of the first championship would be the ultimate, of course, but taking the first prize of £485,850 on Sunday will do nicely for now.

Despite not having won a tournament since September 2007, Westwood finished third on the Order of Merit last season and, having come third in both The Open and US PGA, he could go into the number one spot this year even with a second-place finish.

With top two Martin Kaymer and Paul Casey out injured, the same applies to 20-year-old Rory McIlroy, while even Ross Fisher in sixth spot could go top by winning the event in which he lost a play-off to Robert Karlsson last year.

All three begin at Carnoustie today — so does Padraig Harrington on his return to Europe — and for McIlroy it will be special indeed because his partner is his father Gerry, who celebrates his 50th birthday next Monday.

Their fourball is completed by Pablo Larrazabal and his father Gustavo, a former Venezuelan Open champion.

Ernie Els, fitting in the event between the Tour Championship in Atlanta and the Presidents Cup in San Francisco, is also partnering his father, while Colin Montgomerie could have his work cut out just to contribute more to his team score than Tim Henman.

The former tennis star, now 35, plays off a one handicap at Sunningdale, while Ryder Cup captain Montgomerie, winner of the event in 2005, currently stands 99th on the Order of Merit and 250th in the world.

Defending champion Karlsson played his first competitive golf since May at last week’s Vivendi Trophy in Paris.

The Swede, troubled by a blister behind his left retina, scored only one point out of four in Continental Europe’s Vivendi Trophy defeat to Britain and Ireland and admitted: “To get back into tournament mode was quite difficult, but it got better by the day and at the end of the week I was quite pleased.”