“It’s hard to figure,” said the world No 1, “but that’s the game of golf.”

Tiger Woods found Lee Westwood’s sudden turn-around in form and confidence to win the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open as difficult to comprehend as everyone else. “It’s hard to figure,” said the world No 1, “but that’s the game of golf.”
Woods may not quite have had his ‘A’ game here but he described it as an improvement from his form at the Byron Nelson Classic the week before. Then he closed with a final round of 63 to miss out by one stroke on the three-way playoff won by Jesper Parnevik.The point is there was little sign of impending doom until Woods hit two rank shots, one on the 11th which found water, and another on the short 14th, the mistakes costing a total of three strokes. Rather he was forced into errors by the brilliance of Westwood’s closing 64 as the Englishman came from two behind Woods to beat him by four and finish three ahead of Italy’s Emanuele Canonica.Woods has succumbed before this year. At La Costa, Darren Clarke put Woods under pressure to beat him in the final of the World Matchplay, and Hal Sutton did the same at the Players Championship.”I was delighted when Darren beat Tiger,” said Westwood. “Someone needed to show that although he is clearly the world No 1, he is only human. I proved I am not intimidated by Tiger and if the world No 1 doesn’t intimidate you, no one else will.”For the first time in almost four years Westwood, 27, found himself out of the limelight for the first few months of this season.

He won the Dimension Data event in South Africa but was out of sorts at the bigger tournaments. Clarke was the centre of attention for his La Costa heroics as Westwood appeared to be taking a step backwards. He saw David Leadbetter as well as his usual coach Pete Cowen. His swing thoughts became confused, and his misery was obvious at The Belfry. While generally needing a run of tournaments to find his best form, Westwood was perhaps losing motivation for week-in, week-out golf.

So being paired with Woods and Sergio Garcia for the first two rounds in Hamburg did him a favour. He felt his swing improve on the practice range and his desire increase on the course “I didn’t expect to win at the start of the week,” he said. “But I started to strike the ball better and I’ve proved to myself I can come out of a slump without having to panic.”Westwood joined Clarke and Parnevik as the three Europeans to win tournaments this year with Woods in the field. Vijay Singh, at the Masters, joins only three Americans on a select list, Sutton, Kirk Triplett and Phil Mickelson.The Deutsche Bank was the strongest field in Europe outside the Open for three years and, unusually, the world ranking points gained by Westwood almost matched those won by Mickelson at the Colonial on Sunday.