When Martin Kaymer won the Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship in 2008 it would be the start of a scintillating six years of golf for the man that had shot 59 on the Pro Golf Tour two years before. The German went on to win another 13 European Tour titles before the end of 2014, including two Majors at the 2010 PGA Championship and 2014 U.S. Open as well as the coveted 2014 Players Championship on the PGA Tour.
The 35 year old has failed to reach those heights since the win at Pinehurst and finds himself without a victory in six long years. But Kaymer has enjoyed a strong start to the 2020 Race to Dubai with four consecutive top 20 finishes in Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Saudi Arabia and Oman after reflecting on where his game had been heading over the last few years during his winter break.
“I was just going with the flow the last two or three years and took my game for granted a little bit,” said the former World No.1. “I didn’t really work on one specific thing and the last few years it was quite clear where my weakness was in my game as I was losing a lot of shots on the green. Outside 10-12 feet I couldn’t make a putt and that led to me not scoring and shooting those low scores that give you an opportunity on the Sunday.”
The last time Kaymer had truly been in touch of another victory was at the 2018 BMW International Open, where he finished tied second and just a shot off champion Matt Wallace at Golf Club Gut Laerchenhof. Kaymer was in need of new ideas and having pinpointed where his game was going wrong, he decided to make some drastic changes.
“I worked a lot on the short game over the winter and I also wanted to drive the ball further without screwing up my natural shot and that takes some planning and communicating with the coach,” he says.
“You have to be brave with these things. It’s easy to try and change something but it doesn’t really go the way that you want right away and then you fall back into your old habits. For me it was more of the mentality of continuing that process as I knew what the other outcome was and that didn’t quite work out for me the last two years. I wanted to and needed to change something and become an even more complete player to try and win tournaments again. I really miss that feeling.”
With his game looking more and more like the Kaymer of old, the feeling of winning again may not be that far away.
