Martin Kaymer pays tribute to coach Gunter Kessler after winning Players

PONTE VEDRA BEACH, Fla. – The agent for Martin Kaymer took the notebook and pen and wrote down the name of Kaymer's coach. It's not that Gunter Kessler is tricky to spell. It's just not a name that gets mentioned often. 

 

That's one reason Kaymer went to lengths to praise his coach after winning The Players Championship, not only for his work but how Kessler goes about it. 

 

"My coach and me, we work for 15, 16 years together now and he's always really under the radar," Kaymer said. "But he has the biggest influence of my game. The way he's teaching is not a way that you always need him. He's not a very selfish person. He teaches the way that you can help yourself in a very simple way." 

 

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Kaymer wrote on his website that Kessler deserves a big part of his success, and that he has been wrongly criticized in recent years as Kaymer, a former world No. 1, fell out of the top 50 in the world ranking. 

 

"He has the talent to teach really everyone, and that is for me really a world-class coach," Kaymer said Sunday night. "He doesn't like the big stage and he doesn't like to be in all those newspapers and stuff. But I really believes he deserves that. It doesn't make him a happier person, and that makes him even nicer. ... Working together worked out very well. We have a lot of trust in each other because it worked out fairly well the first 13, 14 years. 

 

"So now I can bring the trophy home and show him that we did well."