Think of the key moments in the career of Sergio García, the gifted Spaniard, who has been so good for so long that we sometimes forget he is only 28. The excited race up the 16th fairway and the leg kick to see where the ball had finished when he was challenging Tiger Woods on the last day of the 1999 US PGA Championship. The celebratory dances when he holed a putt to win a match in a Ryder Cup.

There were not many displays of exuberance during a long and windy afternoon at The Players Championship on Sunday, a day that García described as harder than the finale to last year’s Open Championship. His play-off victory at Sawgrass catapulted the Spaniard from eighteenth to No 10 in the world, making him the highest-ranked European player, one place ahead of England’s Justin Rose.

García believes the secret for him was to play golf “like a kid. To have fun. Play and believe in your ability to hit the ball and the shot.” When he does that, he plays well, he said.

He should have added that when he putts well, he scores well because the rest of his game can be taken for granted. Arguably the longest, straightest driver in the world, he hits some of the crispest irons and has a vivid imagination and a deft touch around the green. Until the past few months, his putting, particularly his short putting, has been comparatively poor.

But since starting work in February with Stan Utley, a short-game coach, García has overcome the uncertainty that sometimes led to him taking two putters on to a course. Utley has made him trust his putting stroke and on Sunday, when García most needed it to be at its best, it was. The man who missed an eight-foot putt to win the Open at Carnoustie last July holed from seven feet on the 7th and 11th, from 16 feet on the 12th, 47 feet on the 14th and then sank one of seven feet for his par on the 18th.

Having fun may have helped him to victory, but his putting guaranteed it.