Martin Kaymer’s game is back on track at long last

Kaymer is back after dismantling his golf swing.

When you enter US Tour history by being only the third player to have eagles on two successive holes you know your game is on song!

Martin Kaymer did that last week at the Wells Fargo tournament in North Carolina.

He followed that up with a first-round 63 on Thursday at the Players’ Championship at Sawgrass which included a record-breaking 29 on the infamously tough back nine.

A second-round 69 on Friday kept him ahead of the field. It’s an amazing turnaround for the German.

He has gone through a torrid time by his standards after completely dismantling the swing that brought him the US PGA Championship.

It cost him his No 1 World Ranking and he admits there have been heartaches along the way.

“It was painful sometimes over these three years,” he told me last week.

“And the changes have taken me much longer than I expected. I thought it would take six, seven months, after The Masters in 2011 and then I’d be able to win tournaments again.

“It hasn’t been easy, and sometimes it wasn’t pretty, but it’s an exciting time now. Making such radical changes means you have to think more and it becomes tough to shoot low scores.

Kaymer explains he became so confused by what he was doing he often had to lean heavily on his faithful Scots caddy Craig Connelly for a route out of the mire.

“You ask a lot of people even though you feel like you can play the game,” he muses.

“Now I trust myself more It fell into place with my coach Gunter Kessler in Arizona this year. Then I went to Germany for another session and we pretty much finalised everything.

“Now I feel I can play golf again. It feels good.”

Kaymer played Thursday’s first round at The Players’ like the guy who had found the lost chord.

He simply demolished what many regard as one of the toughest tests in golf and did a similar job in Friday’s second round.

“I really like Sawgrass because you have to fight for your score,” he said.

Kaymer isn’t the first and won’t be the last to dismantle a swing that has brought rich rewards.

But not everyone has the built-in patience that seems to be a part of the German psyche.

And, whether he wins tonight or not, he’ll surely leave his lowly world ranking of 61 far behind him as he now concentrates on another Ryder Cup spot at Gleneagles in September.