The real coach of 2010, Pete Cowen

The look on his face didn't give anything away, but if anyone was entitled to leap from his chair and yell "Fix!" it was Pete Cowen at last year's BBC Sports Personality of the Year awards.

Actually, "Nonsense" or "You've got to be kidding" would have been equally appropriate responses to the news that Ryder Cup captain Colin Montgomerie was somehow "coach of the year" rather than the man behind the golf swings of Open champion Louis Oosthuizen, US Open champion Graeme McDowell and the newly-minted world No.1, Lee Westwood.

"I was proud to be awarded the UK Coach of the Year for 2010," says Cowen, a typically no-nonsense Yorkshireman. "And being named High Performance Coach of the Year was maybe even better, as I beat England cricket coach Andy Flower to win that one.

"The unfortunate thing about the BBC Sports Personality thing was that I knew six weeks before that Monty was getting it. The award was the result of a vote by newspaper sports editors apparently. It came out while we were in Dubai.

"Most of those newspaper guys clearly don't know who I am. When Colin came in on the night, I was there. Before we even went into the auditorium, I said to him: 'You're not seriously going to accept this are you?' He said he would accept it and give it straight to me. I told him he should certainly give it to someone, as he certainly wasn't the coach of the year.

"That's why Monty was embarrassed when he got up to speak. He made a point of thanking all the coaches who had been at Celtic Manor - myself, Denis Pugh and Mark Roe - for all the help we had provided. Which was only right."

For all his understandable amusement at Monty's lack of credibility in the coaching field, Cowen is well used to travelling under the radar. A self-confessed journeyman professional who left the amateur ranks at the age of 16 without a handicap to his name - "I shot 109-100 in my first tournament, practised every day for six months then shot 75-73 in my second" - Cowen has laboured long and hard to make himself one of the world's leading experts on sport's most analysed move, the golf swing.

"Pete has a great passion for what he does and his knowledge of swing mechanics is almost peerless," says Westwood, who has been with Cowen off and on since 1995. "He motivates his players with his own work ethic. He'd stay on the range forever if he could."

Indeed, Cowen is a familiar and seemingly perennial figure on ranges the world over.All of which makes him perhaps the easiest person to find at tournaments where his men are playing.

"Pete has an incredible willingness to work hard," says Pugh, who works with Ryder Cup players Edoardo and Francesco Molinari and Ross Fisher. "He'll do whatever it takes to make his players better. If you look at a Pete Cowen pupil you don't know it right away, which is a good thing. Pete has his ideas, but he hasn't got a method. He works on good principles but with the players."

Still, for all his success behind the scenes, like most coaches, Cowen is a frustrated player. Good enough to have played in eight Open Championships, win the 1975 Zambian Open and almost crack the top 50 on the European Order of Merit, the 60-year-old from Rotherham betrays a poignant wistfulness when he looks back at his playing career. "I wasn't a bad player, but I am unfulfilled in that respect," he admits. "I wanted to be a great player, not a great coach. With coaching there is obviously satisfaction, but it is a secondary satisfaction. Even last year, when Graeme won at Pebble Beach and Louis won at St Andrews - quite a double - it wasn't the same for me. I'd have loved Lee to win at Augusta, too. And he would have done but for Mickelson's great charge in the third round.

"Anyway, I had some talent, but all I ever achieved as a player was through hard work. I played in Europe for two years before I slipped a disc and missed the next two seasons. I had to change my technique to ease the pressure on my back. In 1979 I finished 55th on the Order of Merit and lost money on the year. I was 33rd in the Open at Lytham that year, when Seve won. But I couldn't make money. Tee-to-green I was pretty good. But putting was a mystery to me. I didn't get it at all."

The big break that Cowen's already-burgeoning coaching career needed came in 1995 when agent Chubby Chandler sent the young Westwood to his door.

"Lee had played 11 events and won only 7,000," recalls Cowen. "He was short and wild off the tee, but had huge promise. I told Chubby that he could win an event that year. He thought I was having a laugh. But I knew Lee could do it. And he did. In the next 22 events, he won twice and picked up 700,000.

"Lee provided the proof to the wider world that I could coach. And it all snowballed from there. Within a couple of years I was teaching a lot of Chubby's lads: Lee, Darren, David Howell, Paul McGinley. And I've been on the tour ever since. In that time we've averaged about eight tournament wins per year."

The obvious highlight, however, has been 2010; a season of success at the highest level it is hard to imagine any coach ever repeating. Not that anything will ever change Cowen's adherence to the sound fundamentals around which his instruction is built.

"I teach the man, not the method, even if there are principles that must apply to everyone," he says. "I believe that, if you work from the short game up, you'll get there.Too many people start with the long game. But you need to have a short game in place so that you can get by as the long game improves. If you work only on your long game, your results will suffer and you will lose confidence.

"So, even as a player improves, he needs to be playable. And a good short game keeps the confidence high enough that they can still get round. An improvement in the long game is all very well. But, if there are no results to go with that, the impression can be that there is no improvement.

"I see some coaches trying to improve a player's good shots. I see no point in that. The good shots take care of themselves. I want to know what causes the bad shot. And the first thing you have to do is reduce the size of the player's deviation pattern. Once you do that, he is at least playable. And, if he has a good short game, he can really play. That's why my players have amassed over 100 wins on the European Tour in the last 16 years."

Phew, even a coach of Monty's stature has to be impressed with numbers like that.