On the eve of the Open Championship at Lytham in 2012, Robert Karlsson withdrew from the event because he was, quite simply, unable to swing a club.
Two years on, the former European Number One made the game look simple again with a first round of 69 at a sun-drenched Royal Liverpool.
"I just couldn't swing the club back. It was total brain-freeze," Karlsson said earlier this year of a problem which took three months to cure. "I wondered if I would play golf again. It was so weird because I knew how to hit shots, it just wasn't happening."
Karlsson admits he had to do some "soul searching" to decide if he even wanted to carry on playing, but once he did he also had to get back to the form which brought him two victories and the title of European Number One in 2008.
"A lot of people thought it was health problems in 2012," said Karlsson, who was in the first group out at 6:25am on Thursday and carded four birdies on the back nine. "It was health problems, but more in the brain I think.
"Last year I didn't play good at all and then had a bit of a team talk with the guys I'm working with in June and we decided to have a look at old pictures, where I did well in 2008, and use some of those as a benchmark and we went from there.
"I've been working very hard from June of last year and things are kind of coming together nicely now, so I'm happy."
The 44-year-old, who made his Open debut as an amateur a quarter of a century ago, insists he does not fear a repeat of the "brain-freeze", adding: "I'm not afraid of that at all because it's nothing to be afraid of, because it's something I created myself.
"When I understood that I was the one who created it, I could uncreate it and just work on it. It was really easy when I understood this is a pattern like any other pattern. You start to stand too long over the ball, thinking too much, and all of a sudden I've been there for a minute, and then it just went from bad to worse.
"I thought back enough to the time when it started to happen to see the signs, to recognise what I felt in the beginning. It hasn't been an issue for over a year."
Karlsson reached as high as sixth in the world in January 2009 - he is now ranked 140th - but missed several months of that season due to a serious eye problem.
Fluid behind the retina in his left eye meant he could not focus properly when stood over the ball, but he at least retained his sense of humour when the doctor turned out not to be a golf fan.
"In the rough was the worst," Karlsson explained. "I had no idea if the ball was sitting up in the rough or on the bottom. It was hopeless. I could only hit driver pretty much, that was on a flat surface and you create the lie yourself. On bunker shots, if I looked down on the sand, for example, it looked like it was just ants everywhere, it just moved.
"I went to the doctor in June of 2009 and the first question was, 'What is your job?' I said I'm a professional golfer. He asked me, 'Are you any good?'
"I was like, 'Yeah, I'm all right.' He asked 'Do you have a lot of money?' I said "I'm all right, okay." So he said 'Then you should have a long time off.'"
