England's Lee Westwood has insisted
he will be ready to perform at the highest level when he makes his third Ryder
Cup appearance next month, despite his worrying slump in form.
Last year's European number one, languishing
84th in the money-list, crashed out of last week's Dutch Open in a blaze of double-bogeys
and bogeys.
But Westwood believes his problems
are purely mental and is now expecting the tide to turn.
"All my game is geared to warming up
for the Ryder Cup," said Westwood on Wednesday before starting the defence of
the Scandinavian Masters title he won in Stockholm last year.
"It's not a tournament you want to
go into playing particularly poorly. If you get there without your game, you're
not going to find it at the Ryder Cup.
"If you put your game on a level of
one to 10 and you get there only five, it will be dragged down to three by all
the pressure on you.
"So you need to go there on a level
of 10 if you can. That's what I'm working to."
Westwood, 28, admitted he needs to
pull out of his dive in form quickly.
He agrees his season has never really
got started because of taking a break at the start of it for the birth of his
first child, making golf take a back seat.
"Taking a break was great because it
enabled me to sit back and look at what I'd done over four years. But I also got
into a comfort zone and it's been difficult to get focused this year," he said.
"My coach Pete sat me down on Sunday
and explained that the difference between me playing well than at the moment is
more mental than anything else, and finally I have to agree with him and what
my manager Chubby (Andrew Chandler) has been telling me for a few weeks.
"When you're playing well and you make
an early bogey you think you can get it back right away with a birdie but when
you're not playing well you tend to think 'here we go again'. Every dropped shot
hurts twice as much.
"I've been my own worst enemy.
"Now I've recognised all this, I have
half a chance of turning things around. It's not going to work unless I want it
to, though. I want it to."
Westwood has a chance to test his theories
against a number of players trying to either consolidate their places in Sam Torrance's
team -- Colin Montgomerie in eighth place and Phillip Price, ninth -- or move
into the top 10 - Mathias Gronberg, Andrew Oldcorn, Ian Woosnam and Robert Karlsson.
Swede Niclas Fasth, who sealed his
Cup place by finishing runner-up to David Duval in the British Open, was one of
the top attractions in the pro-am, along with Jesper Parnevik.
