Martin Kaymer will be happy to sacrifice any thoughts of playing "beautiful" golf in order to get his hands on The Claret Jug this Sunday.
US PGA Champion Kaymer is one of the favourites for The 140th Open Championship, which gets under way at Royal St George's in Sandwich on Thursday.
But with a testing course set to be made harder by inclement weather, the German World Number Three is bracing himself to "win ugly" as he tries to claim a second Major title.
"The greens are very slopey, very difficult, and some approaches seem to be impossible sometimes, but that's fine," the 26 year old said. "It's a big challenge, and we are the best players in the world here, so it should be tough. At the end of the day everybody has to deal with the same golf course.
"The good thing about The Open is you don't have to play, let's say, beautiful golf. You have to score well.
"On those golf courses when you play The Open sometimes you don't even see the fairway, you just see rough and some bunkers and the landscaping and the background. You need to be very precise with your target.
"You have to think a lot and, if you have to be more precise, it takes more energy. You have to concentrate more and focus more, and you have to be like this probably on every single shot, even the lay-ups. You have to give yourself good angles to the green, so it's a very tiring week."
Kaymer will be making just his fourth appearance in The Open, but has improved markedly every year. He was 23 over par and 80th on his debut at Birkdale in 2008, 34th at Turnberry the following year and seventh at St Andrews 12 months ago, despite finishing with four putts from just short of the 18th green in the final round.
"I wouldn't mind improving again," he added. "It's a favourite golf tournament all year. It's a fantastic Major, the only one that we have in Europe, and I think the US Open and US PGA are almost regular PGA Tour tournaments, just with more difficult conditions.
"But The Open is so different than all the other tournaments, and that makes it very special and new. You have to be very creative and you have to think a lot, and mentally it's very tiring.
"Of course some days you get some good breaks, some days you get some bad breaks, but that is what the golf course and the golf tournament is about. That is what I like about it. It's not normal. You have to play different golf sometimes."
As for the state of his game, Kaymer added: "I'm playing better golf every week since I played in Munich, since I saw my coach, and my confidence is getting higher and higher.
"The last tournament I played (the French Open), I probably had a very good chance to win, or I should have won it, but just made a couple of mistakes early in the final round.
"But it was good preparation for The Open too, because the golf course played very fast and firm."
