The Nearly Man

Since the number of times he could be up there in the future had to be limited, he felt it made sense to enjoy himself. "It’s where you want to be after all."

After his closing 75 he insisted he was not too disappointed, pointing to how he was a philosophical person, one who didn’t let anything get to him anymore.

"Perhaps he should," suggested Derek Lawrenson, writing in the Daily Mail the following day. "Perhaps he should have been gutted."

As those aforementioned Tweets would reveal, he was no different than anyone else would have been in his situation. He was ruffled to the core.

Maybe that little explosion will have done him no harm.

Though there is no getting away from the fact that 41 is hardly the optimum age for major hunting, it has to be remembered that his generation are fitter than their predecessors.

Westwood has been working on a bit of weight-loss over the winter and also on his flexibility. Also in his favour is the fact that he has stopped bouncing from one coach to another - he is currently with Sean Foley - and that people’s expectations are not what they were.

He would make for a hugely popular winner and, if and when he can get that first major under his belt, you would back him to handle the very different pressures attached to capturing a second.