Kaymer hoping to maintain German quality in the Open

HOYLAKE England (Reuters) - In-form Martin Kaymer says his golf swing, like most things assembled in Germany, be it cars, soccer teams or kitchen appliances, is built to last.





Kaymer added the U.S. Open title to the PGA title he won in 2010 last month and arrived at the Royal Liverpool course this week full of confidence and one of the favourites to lift the British Open's Claret Jug on Sunday.

Since claiming his first major four years ago and shooting to the top of the world rankings, Kaymer's career suffered a brief lull in 2012-13 before re-igniting with a vengeance.

As well as his romp in Pinehurst, where he won by eight strokes, he also claimed the Players Championship, the so-called fifth major, in Florida the month before.

Kaymer, 29, who is friends with Germany's World Cup winning striker Thomas Mueller, said it was all down to quality.

"If you build a house in Germany, it lasts 1,800 years. It's not going to fly away when there's a storm," Kaymer told reporters on Tuesday in the build-up to the year's third major.

"You see the cars that we build. I'm making an advertisement for my country, but it's just the quality of work. It's permanent. It lasts.

"That's how you want to do certain things on the golf course. I changed my swing because it lasts long-term. I can rely on it.

"At the end of the day it's not about talking and always hoping and believing, it's about the delivering. So and I think that is what a lot of Germans do."

Kaymer watched on television on Sunday as Germany beat Argentina to win the World Cup in Rio de Janeiro and said that the patience they showed throughout the month-long tournament would be something he needs to display this week as he tries to make his mark on the Open.

"They played it very patient," he said. "They were waiting. It was a very patient success. They didn't try to force anything because they knew they were good enough. It was just about delivering what they can do.

"Every team has a bad day here and there. Germany didn't play great against America. But they got away with it.

"That's the same at a golf tournament. You have a day when you don't play super good, but you hang in there and you play something around par that keeps you in the tournament."

Kaymer, who became world No.1 in 2011, has only one top-10 finish at the Open, a seventh in 2010, but says links golf requires more of a cerebral touch than the functional style that can earn rewards in the other majors.

"There's never really a standard golf shot," he said of the challenges that the field will face at Hoylake this week.

"There's always something you have to put in consideration. You need to really play a game. It's not about 155, 8-iron. You have 165, 6-iron. It's never like this.

"You have to think so much. You have to be creative. You have to play with the slopes, with the weather, with the wind, everything. So I really enjoy that.

"And it's never a putting competition. I think the British Open is every year like a fight, a battle.

"I haven't been very successful at the Open yet but I've been always -- I think I always made the cut, at least."

Kaymer will be expecting more this year to continue the feel-good factor sweeping German sport.





(Reporting by Martyn Herman, editing by Tony Goodson)


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