Alastair Grant / AP

Steve Stricker lines up a putt on the 13th hole.

Part of the problem was that he wasn’t sure he really wanted to play, despite the lucrative rewards. His wife was no longer his caddie by the time his first child arrived in 1998, and Stricker went to tournaments thinking about home, not the job at hand. He rarely played past September, preferring to go bow hunting with friends back in Wisconsin.

“You fight that feeling of wanting to be home with your family compared to being out here,” he said. “You’ve got to try to find that within yourself, to make it good within yourself, to make you feel good about being out here.”

Stricker’s last win came in the Accenture Match Play Championship in Australia at the start of the 2001 season. His game, though, was already sinking, and the low point came when he didn’t turn in his application for Q School in 2004, figuring he wouldn’t need it. He did, losing his limited eligibility when he fell out of the top 150 money winners by one spot in the final tournament.

He’s 40 now, not the young prospect he once was, but still plenty young to compete with the big hitters. He’s still a magician with the putter, and some hard work and hard thinking have helped him regain his edge.

At the U.S. Open, Stricker held a share of the lead in the final round before making a double bogey on the 10th hole at Oakmont, and he finished second in the AT&T earlier this month. Now he plays in the final group in the British Open, with nothing to lose after spotting Garcia a three-shot lead.

There will be some jitters, but he’s beginning to understand more how to deal with them, too.

“It gets emotional. It does for me, at least,” Stricker said. “But those are the things that I need to work on and try to fight the results out of your mind ... try to just stick into the present and hit the shot at hand.”

If he does, there’s a decent chance he could be raising the claret jug Sunday night, a major champion at last and proof that nice guys can finish first.