Lee Westwood bids for a third win on the bounce when he takes part in this week's Volvo World Match Play.
World number one starts first leg of two-week battle with Donald
Lee Westwood bids for a third win on the bounce when he takes part in this week's Volvo World Match Play.
The Englishman has returned to number one in the world after back-to-back wins in Indonesia and Korea and hopes to keep the run going when he switches to the matchplay format at Finca Cortesin on Spain's Costa del Sol.
Westwood's toughest obstacle could be world number two and fellow Englishman Luke Donald, who won golf's other big Match Play title - the WGC-Accenture - in Arizona earlier this month.
Donald has now had seven seven successive top 10 finishes in the US after his tied fourth place in the Players Championship but after excelling on different continents, he and Westwood now square up on European soil for the next two weeks.
Showdown
After their showdown in Spain they will be at Wentworth for the BMW PGA Championship next week and Westwood can't wait to play in front of his home fans.
Westwood said: "Hopefully we'll have a typically balmy British spring-summer, everybody will be in T-shirts and there will be 100,000 people there.
"Next week's going to be one of the strongest and best fields that I think the PGA Championship has ever had, so if that doesn't get them out nothing will.
"It's the first time I think a country has had one and two in the world other than America and it just shows you the state of English and British golf right now.
"We have two Northern Irishmen in the top six, Paul (Casey) at ninth and people like Ian (Poulter) right up there as well."
Graeme McDowell, Rory McIlroy - the two Ulstermen in question - Casey and Poulter are also back in Europe for this fortnight and with third-ranked Martin Kaymer playing as well the Match Play has five of the world's top six and all four current major champions in its 24-man field.
They are competing for a first prize of £703,000 that is second only to The Open in Europe this year - and any one of Westwood, Donald or Kaymer could be number one on Sunday night.
First they have to negotiate the group stages. Not held last year, the championship returns with a new format in which there are eight groups of three, with the top two in each on Friday night progressing to the knockout stages.
In theory, all 24 players could be involved in sudden death play-offs to decide who goes through if, for instance, they all win one group game and lose the other.
