during his slide down the world rankings.
There were those who never doubted him and believed all along that although form is fickle, class is permanent… and Lee John Westwood has it in spades.
I never once doubted that he might have forgotten how to win and when he got into position to do it on Sunday, there was only ever going to be one winner.   He may have temporarily forgotten how to play, but not how to win and there is a big difference.
Winning as opposed to playing is a different discipline… and I could see how his game went up five levels just as soon as he knew he was on the leader board.   We saw it at the Ryder Cup and it surfaced again in Germany.   I do not think he will lose it again, but I certainly feel he will win again before the end of the season.
Lee may have talked about packing in during the darkest days, but I am convinced he was never really serious.  He is made of much stronger stuff than that and so he proved.
Lee’s turning point came when he linked up with David Leadbetter and the 40 hours the pair packed in together.  When he returned from Florida it was with a new direction and since then he has worked his backside off putting it all together.
Lee has also been fortunate in getting the services of Peter ‘Lucky’ Coleman because there is no more respected caddie in the game.   When Dave Renwick accepted an offer he could not refuse to return to Vijay Singh, it just coincided with Peter parting from Bernhard Langer after many years.   The pair hit it off immediately.
Now Lee has new goals and I am sure he will be a better player and person for what he has had to go through.  Whether or not he ever gets back to being world no.4 only time will tell, but he has done it once and I am certainly not going to back against him returning and going even higher.