as anything but a funny home video.
Rod Pampling sat down with his long-time coach Gary Edwin recently and the show was quite revealing.
The pair, on a computer that Pampling joked today was so old that it “didn’t have wifi capability”, noticed the Queenslander’s swing had altered.
And while the change from the motion that took him as far up the world rankings as No.22 in the middle of 2006 was minimal, it was enough to have that mark drop to No.479.
And it’s those home movies that have arrested the slide as the 45-year-old fired one of his best rounds of the season today – a four-under-par 67 to jump to two under overall and a tie for ninth.
“I just went back through the old videos after the Web.com finals with Gary and without really noticing it beforehand, a few things had changed,” he said.
“We revamped it back to … around the 200-4-08 swing … and it’s nice to hit some good shots again.
“There was nothing planned to change, it just evolved.
“But sometimes you’re so close to what you’re doing, you don’t notice the changes.”
Pampling had been four over after four holes of the first round, but he briefly hit the lead today after a sizzling outward nine including four successive birdies.
“I’ve been having a lot of really good stretches of golf lately — even last week I had 6-8 holes in a row which were fantastic and then I’d throw in a couple of silly holes,” he said.
“Whereas today I didn’t have that — today was the day I got rid of that bad stuff, finally.”
Pampling, who won twice in 12 full years on the US PGA Tour, has lost his status on world golf’s biggest stage.
But he certainly hasn’t lost the fire that took him all the way to the top.
“I still get excited by it, by competing like this – I still love the game, no question about that.”