Westwood putts his game back in shape

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Last Thursday, the Worksop golfer made a trip to Birmingham to a putting "laboratory" already visited by Ryder Cup team-mates Padraig Harrington and David Howell and already he feels he is reaping the rewards.

"The facility is just a hard floor, carpet, cameras all over and mirrors," he said. "I've embraced the technology. I'm now starting the ball on line a bit more and getting the pace back. I was shocked how bad it was. It's been abysmal pretty much all year."

When Lee Westwood was Europe's number one golfer in 2000 he was also the number one putter. This season he is 28th on the Order of Merit, but a woeful 167th in putting.

He added: "It's imperative that you make putts and using a slow motion camera he looked at what was going on and it was fairly obvious I wasn't going to make anything the way I was putting."

Another member of last September's Ryder Cup side, Sergio Garcia, has taken the more drastic action of switching to a belly putter this week. A few years ago he tried it once in Hawaii, but this time the experiment looks set to be longer.

Looking at his statistics in the States things appear to have been getting much better for the 27-year-old Spaniard on the greens. He was ranked 196th in putting two years, 158th last season and currently stands 36th.

But at the US Open last month he lost confidence again and, like Westwood, decided something had to happen.

"I don't mind missing putts, but what I do mind is when you hit it and you know the ball's got no chance of going in," he said after a level-par opening 71 at Loch Lomond.

"I've been practising with the belly putter the last three weeks and it felt pretty good, although the greens this afternoon were a little suspicious. It's not a great week to test it, but if I feel it's working it will stay."