KEY POINTS:
HOUSTON - Michael Campbell's long-time golf coach is confident his protege will return from "Walkabout Creek" to ignite his 2007 season in time for next week's Masters.
Nobody knows Campbell's game better than Jonathon Yarwood and he has continued to work hard with the 2005 US Open winner, despite him failing to impress three months into a new season.
Campbell has contested only five events this year, managing to make the cut in three.
Those cuts made included when he withdrew after three rounds of the Malaysian Open, and when he finished near the tail of the field in last week's 'no cut' CA Championship World Golf Championship in Florida.
Yarwood has joined Campbell this week in Texas for the $7.85 million Shell Houston Open, starting Thursday.
The coach was also looking ahead to next week's US Masters and turning around Campbell's Augusta anguish of having missed the halfway cut in all six prior starts.
"Always at the start of a year, and he's done it historically at the start of most years, Campbell just disappears off the golfing map a little bit," said Yarwood.
"It's like he goes off to what I call 'Walkabout Creek'. The weird thing is that it's almost like he has to go off to Walkabout Creek in order to get motivated and fire himself up.
"When everything's right and he's cruising along he tends to lose sight of what he needs to do and he starts to feel like he's in a little bit of trouble," Yarwood said.
"But it's a big challenge for me to get him out of that mode because I am working with a very talented golfer and on paper you would think that Michael should be playing a lot better than he is."
Yarwood has spent considerable time with Campbell this year including travelling to Qatar for his first event of the new season and also arranging for New Zealand's top golfer to spend a few days at Yarwood's Florida base ahead of last week's WGC event in Miami.
"It was very tough conditions last week at Doral and we saw how easy it was for a player's game to get away from him," Yarwood said.
"But Michael and I have continued on the same theme though we have altered his down-swing a little bit so that we keep his legs much more stable and also trying to get him to fire his right side better.
"I've had him starting to hit a soft fade that he will use a lot at Augusta along with the pushes and the pulls he tends to hit whilst I have also tried to improve his driving.
"So everything we are doing is about gearing up for Augusta and that major and I feel as though it is starting to bear fruit."
Campbell's appearance in Houston also breaks from tradition with the current world No 38 not normally competing in the week before a major.
"Jonathon and I decided to change the formula and that's why I am in Houston this week simply because I have played terrible at Augusta," Campbell said.
"My normal routine is just to take the week off and that would mean working with Jonathon down at his base in Florida so this time around we've decided to mix up my schedule and play the week before Augusta.
"But in saying that here we are at the end of March and I really haven't played that much golf.
"This is only my sixth event in three months and you can practice as much as you can on the range but the most important thing is competition."
Campbell's appearance in the sprawling Texas city is the second occasion he has competed in the Houston Open with his first being in 2002 when he missed the halfway cut.
- NZPA
