Stephen Gallacher yesterday admitted that he is having to re-learn playing the courses that used to come naturally to him as he prepares to contest this week’s Alfred Dunhill Links Championship.

The 41-year-old has always relished competing over the Old Course, Carnoustie and Kingsbarns, the three links layouts which co-host the £4 million Pro-Am, and the Scot scored his first European Tour win in this very event back in 2004.

Gallacher has endured an injury-ravaged spell over the last year or so and, following surgery on a niggling hand injury earlier in the campaign, he was warned by a specialist that if he didn’t change his swing then his career would be over.

The former Ryder Cup player is still trying to get to grips with a new approach to his profession and a return to three of his favourite courses this week have simply highlighted the tricky intricacies of the change.

“The hardest thing for me is that I’ve played these courses since I was 15 and I’ve played them all right-to-left and now I’ve got to see them all left-to-right to take away the stress from my hand,” explained Gallacher. “It’s a bit of a jigsaw trying to piece it all together. It’s just a process of changing a 10 degrees in-and-out to a 10 degrees out-to-in but it’s quite a big shift. It’s the most technical I’ve ever been but the big thing now is that I’m not having any problems with my hand. I had to do this and now I don’t get any pain.”