Lee Westwood parts company with coach

Former world number one Lee Westwood has parted company with long-time coach Pete Cowen in a bid to kick-start his game ahead of the Ryder Cup. Westwood, 39, missed the halfway cut in the USPGA Championship on Friday and the world number four has now gone 59 majors without winning one. "Lee admits he needed to shake things up," manager Andrew "Chubby" Chandler said. "He'd lost his focus and his enthusiasm a bit because he wasn't getting the rewards for his long game. "Parting company with Pete is because he's passing on advice to Lee, but he's not around to follow it through. "Lee is very structured about going to the gym, but not about practising. Pete was here for two days with Graeme (McDowell) this week when Lee wanted to work with him, so it just wasn't working out. "Lee's the sort who needs someone standing over him, making him hit chip after chip and telling him what he's doing wrong. "It's not like he's got the yips or anything - he just needs to improve his technique. "He's not going to have a long-game coach for the foreseeable future - there's nothing wrong with that part of his game, as you could see from the fact that he topped the greens in regulation stats here for the first two rounds. "When you miss the cut after that it gets even more frustrating and that probably brought matters to a head. "It does start to get you down when you keep walking off feeling disappointed and frustrated, so we're going to put a few things in place - including a new short-game coach. "Lee needs to try something different with his chipping and putting - he's never been the greatest chipper, but his putting also needs work. He knows that." Westwood is set to feature in the Europe team that will defend the Ryder Cup trophy in Chicago in less than seven weeks.