For all that golf is a truly international game, there remains something quintessentially British about the Open Championship, which begins today at Royal Birkdale. For a start, there are our British “summers”. Would any Open seem proper without the wind and spits of rain that are expected on the Lancashire coast today? More than this, there is also that peculiar British hang-up about precision of language when it comes to golf and, in particular, the Open.

Here is a snapshot of a conversation that took place yesterday in the Birkdale media centre between two reporters — one of them American — who were striving to clarify their terms of reference for this sacred week of British sport.

“They don’t call this event ‘a tournament’, do they, it’s ‘the championship’, right?” one asked.

“That’s right,” his colleague said. “It’s either ‘the Open’ or just ‘the championship’.”

“But they call the Masters ‘the Masters tournament’ in the US, right?”

“Yes, but you’d never refer to the Open like that. It’s just ‘the Open’.”

There may be a whiff of British aloofness about this pride in the singular naming of their great golf event, although, alas, that pride cannot be extended to a recent roll call of British winners. This is another area in which the Open Championship can be distinguished from the US Open, its cousin across the water.

While Britain has witnessed only two homegrown winners of the Open in the past 17 years — Nick Faldo and Paul Lawrie — the US Open has had ten native wins in the equivalent period, and by seven men. It is a vexing issue for British fans, who, after his victory at Carnoustie last year, are tempted to claim Padraig Harrington, the Irishman, as one of their own.

The question is, who is to end this British suffering and win the Open? Many eyes are being cast in Lee Westwood’s direction. That expectation around Westwood has grown since Faldo, the Europe Ryder Cup captain, said on Tuesday that the Englishman was “playing brilliantly” before an audience of international golf writers.

If Westwood has grown in stature, he has shrunk in size after a diet. Leaner, meaner and ready to strike: an image of Westwood was used by the magazine GolfPunk for their Open issue, standing menacingly by a swimming pool, dressed like Harvey Keitel in Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs. After so long as a nearly man, Westwood is ready for a starring role.

Westwood, though, would have had much less of a chance this week had it not been for a chance conversation he had last year with Mark Roe, the professional turned coach, who has helped to transform his game.

Westwood tumbled down the rankings at the turn of the millennium, falling out of the world’s top 250 having been a staple in the top ten for three years. Even after returning to form in recent years, Westwood felt one gnawing frustration, which was his relatively poor greenside play. Help was required and it duly came.

“I bumped into Lee in the locker-room at Loch Lomond last year,” Roe said. “I’d been watching him all year and I thought he was playing great. I told him so, but he said, ‘If I could chip like you, I’d be a major champion.’ I said: ‘If you could chip like me, you’d have won three majors by now.’

“He said to me, ‘Why don’t you teach me to chip?’ Instantly, I thought, ‘Why not?’ I knew his faults because I watched him every week on the Golf Night show [on Sky Sports]. So we started to work at the Open last year. He took to it straight away.

“Lee was a prolific ball-striker, which meant he would hit a lot of greens. Because of that, he didn’t rely on his short game too heavily. But when your long game deserts you, you have to have a short game.

“He was one-dimensional in his short game and would be the first to admit it. And he couldn’t play bunker shots particularly well. They say you can’t teach ‘feel’, but I keep it simple. The first thing you’ve got to teach in short game is spin control. Lee worked on it and very quickly he started to improve.

“Now there are options to his shots. I think if you give somebody the combination of spin control and visualisation, in essence you give them ‘feel’.”

The evidence since this colloboration between Roe and Westwood has been obvious, such as at the US Open last month, when Westwood finished third. “His short game at Torrey Pines [near San Diego] was sensational all week and he chipped well [in the Masters] at Augusta as well,” Roe said. “He has really improved.”

Westwood disputes that there is “a next level” in golf, claiming it to be a fallacy. If he wins this week at Birkdale, though, it would represent a remarkable ascent, and, for good measure, a British one.