Rusty Masters champion back to work

US Masters winner Danny Willett will play his first tournament this weekend since winning in Augusta.

Masters champion Danny Willett has been away from golf for a month and has been working harder than ever.

Not with his golf clubs but with a pen, having to sign about 200 yellow Masters flags for charity since the 28-year-old from England slipped on a green jacket last month.

As for the golf? Not so much.

"(I'm) a little rusty," Willett said. "Try and get some work done this week ... and hopefully come Thursday, we'll have shook off a little bit of that rust."

This was a nice problem to have.

Even before he rallied from a five-shot deficit to beat Jordan Spieth on the back nine at Augusta National, Willett had planned a quiet month away from golf with his wife and newborn son to relax and do what he described as "normal things."

He wasn't planning on chaos back home in a country celebrating its first Masters champion in 20 years.

Asked what he had done differently because of winning his first major, Willett smiled and said, "Drunk more."

Willett plans to bring his green jacket with him wherever he plays, and with it comes expectations he hasn't felt since he was the world's No. 1 amateur in 2008.

Slowed by nagging back problems, the Masters was only his fifth victory worldwide.

"I thought at the beginning of the year he would win one of the next six majors," Willett's caddy Chubby Chandler said.

"And I think he'll win another in the next four. He has a proper short game. He has the head, the heart and the (guts). That's a good combination."

However, the man himself is ignoring those expectations.

"I'm not really too fussed about what everybody else thinks," Willett said.

"I'm trying to do my bit. And what I've done over the last 18 months, two years, it's proved to myself that I can do some pretty special things."


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Source: AAP


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