Tyrrell Hatton hopes that defending his title at the 2022 Abu Dhabi HSBC Championship can get the competitive juices flowing as he looks for a record-breaking fifth Rolex Series victory.
The Englishman lifted the Falcon Trophy last season to add to his wins at the Italian Open, Turkish Open and BMW PGA Championship and join Jon Rahm on four Rolex Series triumphs.
He revealed some disappointment at only adding a further two top tens over the 2021 DP World Tour season and admitted he lost some motivation to train and practise over the second half of the campaign.
But he is now back in the gym and once again eager to get the Desert Swing off to a flying start.
"That was an amazing way to start the year," he said. "Sadly from that moment on it didn't sort of get any better.
"The first few weeks of the year, you don't really know where your game is at. You're kind of just feeling your way back into it really and so to sort of pick up a victory like that early is good for confidence.
"I was on a great run at that moment in my career. I think fourth win in 20-odd months or something like that. You know, obviously that was great.
"In 2020, I was working pretty hard in the gym throughout the whole year, in a much better place fitness-wise. More comfortable with my own skin and I think that just actually allowed me to go play better golf.
"Certainly the back half of last year, I was doing no training. Wasn't that motivated to practise either. So there's a combination of things. It's not always plain sailing.
"So I've tried, I flew out to Orlando on New Year's Eve and sort of tried to do a two-week bootcamp of training and practice as well and tried to just get back into it, really. Find the motivation to go and do it.
I'm a very competitive person and obviously results haven't been going that well and that's disappointing
"Training-wise has been good. Still struggle with how to practise and what actually, when I get there is just going through the motions. But that's a work-in-progress for sure.
"Maybe I've always been a fair-weather golfer.
"I'm a very competitive person and obviously results haven't been going that well and that's disappointing.
"I think it's when you're up there in the mix and you have that nervous energy, that's what we want to experience every week. Obviously you can't achieve it every week but you try your best to do so and I think those are the weeks where it's definitely a lot more enjoyable than struggling your way through."
Hatton has mounted a successful title defence before at the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship but this week is the second time he has had to defend on a different course to the one upon which he won.
He won the Italian Open at Golf Club Milano in 2017 and went on to miss the cut at Gardagolf Country Club the following year.
He will now be looking to avoid a similar fate, with this event moving north east from Abu Dhabi Golf Club to Yas Links.
"I'm hoping I can do a better job this time around," he said.
"This week is a new course for everyone, so it's hard to kind of know what the rough winning score generally is.
"I know we've got a lot of wind forecast for Friday and that's going to obviously be a challenging day for everyone. But we'll go out there, we'll give it our best and see what happens."
