After suffering a shoulder injury moving luggage Campbell’s confidence nose-dived and nowhere was that more apparent than at the Players’ Championship in Florida, where he had a first-round 89 and then was disqualified for signing for an 87.

“I’m hitting shots 100 yards left. I haven’t done that since I was 12,” he said that day. “It’s like an alien has taken over my body.”

Coming back to Europe helped pick him up off the floor as he made the cut in the Volvo PGA championship and Wales Open, but returning to the States the 34-year-old crashed out of the US Open after a second-round 80 and then made an early exit from the Buick Classic two weeks ago as well.

Now, though, he will try to focus not on the past, but on attempting to become only the third player to retain the European Open. Per-Ulrik Johansson did it in 1996 and 1997 and Lee Westwood – another longing for a return to form – in 1999 and 2000.

Last year Campbell appeared to be coasting to an emphatic victory as he pulled five shots clear of the field with four holes to play, but with the finishing line in sight the 2006 Ryder Cup course started to hit back.

At one stage Bradley Dredge, Retief Goosen, Padraig Harrington and Paul Lawrie all threatened to feature in a play-off with the Kiwi, but despite a trip to the water at the last – Harrington followed him in – Campbell held on to win by a shot.

All five of last year’s main protagonists are back in action this time round, augmenting an already strong field with Harrington in particular keen to notch victory in the £2m (€2.8m) event and emulate Darren Clarke’s success of 2001, the only Irishman to win the tournament since in began in 1978.

It would also break a personal duck for the 31-year-old Dubliner, who has never tasted European tour success in his native country.

For Clarke the return to The K Club will invoke happy memories. Although it is a different overall lay-out the course still forms part of the one where he carded a superb 12-under-par 60 in the 1999 tournament.

Although he did not go on to win that year, being pipped by stablemate Westwood, Clarke had to wait only two years to savour the moment of triumph, winning by three shots in 2001 to end a 19-year wait for an Irish European tour winner on home soil.

Trying to predict a winner, though, is as easy as finding a needle in a haystack judging by recent events.

Following Harrington’s victory in the Deutsche Bank-SAP Open in Hamburg the circuit moved on to Wentworth for the Volvo PGA championship and saw Ignacio Garrido, 123rd on the Order of Merit, triumph.

Then Ian Poulter won the Wales Open while suffering from tonsilitis and after missing the halfway cut in his three previous starts, Greg Owen captured the British Masters after 21 top-10 finishes without a win, Dane Soren Kjeldsen also had his first success at the Diageo Championship and then last Sunday, most amazingly of all, Luton’s Philip Golding took the French Open after a record 16 trips to the tour qualifying school and nothing better than a sixth place finish in his previous 200 tournaments.