His change of heart occurred in 2010 as he slipped from 59th to 159th in the putting averages – and dropped out of the all-important top 50 in the World Rankings.
This great champion returned to his putting background to hazard a guess as to why things had gone so badly wrong.
"As a kid," he began, "I was a great putter but, after nearly 30 years of pressure putting – from the time I was 12 to 41 – I lost the knack. It could have been the gathering pressure of all those competitive years or it could simply have been ‘an age thing’. I’ll never know."
He started experimenting with the long putter around the time of the 2011 Masters and, initially, it was an out-and-out embarrassment. Time after time, he had to explain himself to fellow-players who would repeat his comments of seven years before.
The embarrassment factor apart, there were technical problems. "It [the belly putter] is so much heavier than any other in the club that it throws off my feel," he complained. "I get off the green with this heavy putter and then I get on the next tee and the driver feels too light."
By the time he finished fourth in the Frys.com Open in October 2011 (for his first top 10 in 12 months) he felt he was finally getting everything to blend. However, whatever the putter he had in hand, he was still having trouble “trying not to miss putts instead of trying to make them." As a result, he was woefully tentative.
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