Golf News:Incredible journey leads Westwood from has-been to No. 1

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It shouldn't matter how long it lasts.

Whether Lee Westwood gets bounced from golf's top ranking before he checks out of his Shanghai hotel Sunday night or rules the roost like imperious King George III camped on the British throne, his accomplishment is no less incredible or indelible.

  Lee Westwood could always putt but once had a short game David Leadbetter called "frightening." (Getty Images)  

Seven years before he climbed to the top of golf's pantheon, Westwood was mired in a soul-crushing slump so pronounced, aficionados hadn't completely carved his name in a marble headstone, (Select Newport 1.5 Putter) but the career obits were being prepped for publication.

At that point, it wasn't so much a career as a careen.

"He got to a point where he was ready to almost quit the game," said David Leadbetter, a longtime friend and Westwood's former swing coach. "Yeah, he was that low. As down as he was then is as up as he is now."

That's some carom, which is why the length of his stay in the game's preeminent perch should be of less concern. Even it's as short as seven days, based on where he was seven years ago, climbing to the top rung represents an unprecedented achievement.

Westwood won seven times worldwide in 2000 and led the European Tour money list at age 27, eventually skied to No. 4 in the world ranking and was rightly heralded as the undisputed English heir to six-time major winner Nick Faldo.  But his stay at the big-boy dinner table was more like a jaunt through the drive-through window — Westwood didn't have time to savor the flavor.

In one of the most precipitous falls of the last quarter-century, he practically vanished without a trace in 2002-03, dropping out of the world top 260. Westwood himself began questioning whether he had the moxie and desire to continue.

This week he supplanted Tiger Woods as world No. 1, becoming the first European to rule the roost since Faldo and completing the most notable comeback since the official world ranking was unveiled 25 seasons ago.

"It's quite a tribute to the guy," Leadbetter said.

Given the number of holes  (discount golf clubs)that needed to be patched in Westwood's game when he bottomed out, Leadbetter is spot on, as they say across the Pond. Seven years after falling to No. 266, nobody is riding higher than Westwood this week at the HSBC Champions event in China.

"You have to have something about you," Westwood said Monday of his stubbornness. "Something different. It's a long way back."

Sure, his comeback isn't quite Hoganesque. Bantam Ben nearly died in a car crash and returned to win major championships. But just because the damage to Westwood wasn't physical or externally obvious, it should not be quickly dismissed.

After leading the E-Tour's order of merit in 2000, Westy went southy in a heartbeat, from toast of the tour to just plain toast. It began gradually, sort of like mental images of a car crash in slow motion. Westwood had zero victories in Europe in ‘01 and missed six cuts, but since he and his wife had welcomed their first child in March, there wasn't much teeth-gnashing about this falloff in form.

By the end of 2002, klaxons were clanging like crazy. Westwood again failed to win a tournament, mustered no top-10 finishes and missed six more cuts. By then, he had started working with Leadbetter, Faldo's former coach, in an attempt to piece it all back together.  (Titleist 2010 AP2 Irons)The beginning of 2003 didn't exactly portend greatness, either. He missed six of his first nine cuts in Europe and skidded to 266th in the world by March — a two-year free fall that drew comparisons to David Duval's shocking skidmarks.

"My goal was to get back to the player I was," Westwood said Monday. "I think I have gotten back and become a better player."

There's no disputing that — Westwood completely reinvented himself with a program that's part renaissance, redo and rehab. The reconstruction really began in 2002-03, and Westwood didn't do it all by himself, of course. Guys like Leadbetter and Pete Cowan, both noted swing coaches, helped spackle Humpty Dumpty back together.

"With Lee, it was just a total loss of confidence," Leadbetter recalled. "In 2000, he was a young guy, he obviously was very confident and didn't know much about it [his swing]. Hey, ignorance is bliss. But then it started leaking out a little bit and issues started to creep in."