Westwood thanks caddie for success

Lee Westwood admitted a chat with his caddie at a pre-tournament beach party helped him secure the Dubai World Championship.

The Englishman took the title and secured the European Tour number one spot with a course record 64 to finish on 23-under-par and beat Ross McGowan by six shots on Sunday.

The tournament was billed as a shoot-out between Westwood and Rory McIlroy to determine who would win the Order of Merit and it was Westwood who triumphed, despite the Northern Irishman's excellent showing in Dubai with a score of -15 for third place.

The Worksop-born star is right back to his best and now ranked fourth in the world and he admitted that there was no special secret to his success, although a talk with his drink-fuelled caddie last Tuesday helped focus his mind on the job in hand.

"The secret was that there was no secret," he said. "It was making everybody else think I had a secret when I didn't really.

"The big turnaround in confidence was catching Billy (caddie Billy Foster) at the beach party on Tuesday.

"He'd probably just had enough Heineken to tell me what he really thought. He said I'd been paying too much attention to the other people around me.

"He said 'you've been out here 16 years - that's longer than all three of them put together (McIlroy, Martin Kaymer and Ross Fisher) and you've won 30 times, which is more than them put together'.

"It's a terrible word to use because I hate it, but he said 'you've got to bully them'. That's why I've been confident all week."