Padraig Harrington feels his game is well suited to the unique Open Championship challenge at Royal Lytham after rediscovering how to play links golf.
Harrington turned down the chance to win the Stg£366,660 first prize at Loch Lomond last week in the £2.2million Scottish Open, preferring instead to concentrate on preparing for the Open.
And the Dubliner will be more than adequately compensated if his links practice pays off with a first Major title on the famous Lancashire links this weekend.
"I played a few rounds last week and it's amazing what you forget about links golf," said Harrington, who made his Open debut here in 1996 and finished joint 18th, his best finish in five appearances coming the following year when he was fifth behind Justin Leonard at Royal Troon.
"On a parkland course you're doing all this mathematics to work out how far the ball's going to fly, how much wind, how much uphill, but it just doesn't work on a links course.
"It's not that you don't want to look at the yardage but you have to play ultimately with feel."
While the rest of Europe's big guns were playing a very wet, American style at Loch Lomond Harrington was getting reacquainted with links golf and hopefully with the kind of strong wind that blew yesterday.
"I haven't performed well at Loch Lomond so it's a good week to take off," said the 29-year-old who used a seven iron to reach the par three opening hole on Sunday but needed a one iron yesterday.
"I had two tough weeks in Ireland and they probably determined the need to take time off.
"Being in Ireland is extra pressure and then I did so well in both events so I was under even more pressure.
"I was exhausted and you need a break after that. I slept for 14 hours one night afterwards. I could have gone to Loch Lomond but just wouldn't have been with it and definitely wouldn't have been with it when I got here."
Meanwhile, Darren Clarke has appears prominently in a poll of golf writers for this week's Open.
Although Tiger Woods is the inevitable favourite, Clarke is tipped to win by seven of the 30 writers, including Philip Reid of the Irish Times, and 12 others have him to finish either second or third.