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Golf can be a cruel game even to those who play it best. Carl Pettersson found that out the hard way as he wandered away from Sedgefield a year ago and wandered back Thursday a changed man.

A hungry man.

He won the Wyndham Championship last August, returning to Greensboro where he attended high school and indulging himself in the same routines he'd perfected while playing at Grimsley, a routine built around golf and hamburgers.

It was after he left here that his routine changed and why he'd come full circle when he walked into the dining room at the Sedgefield Country Club. Pettersson, like all professional golfers, just wanted to get better.

"I lost 30 pounds last year in the offseason thinking 'Man, I'm going to work out and start getting better,' " he said. "I got worse."

He lost the weight fast, probably too fast, and in the process lost his golf game, too. His 2009 season has been lean as he has tried to put the weight back on and return his game to where it was last year when he came here and brought Sedgefield to its knees.

"I wanted to see if I could get better," Pettersson said. "Golf's a funny game."

He's had to work harder this year than any in his career, a year he'd anticipated because of all the offseason training, the dieting and the workouts designed to make him stronger and build stamina for what he'd hoped would be a break-out season.

"I just started working out and eating better," he said. "Now I wish I never did it."

Now he's not working out at all and eating worse.

"I lost a lot of confidence from playing bad," he said. "That's the worst part of it. I just need to get the confidence back, especially coming back here. Playing in Greensboro in a few weeks will help that. I've had some good rounds, I just haven't had any consistency."

Pettersson has made only nine cuts in 22 events this year. He has two top-25 finishes and has dropped to 136th in the world rankings. A year ago, he thought he was on the verge of making a Ryder Cup team and climbing to the top echelon of the game.

Getting in shape seemed like a logical place to start.

"I was feeling pretty tired after rounds," Pettersson said. "I thought I was way too young to be feeling that. When I do something, I'm pretty compulsive. I worked out hard, ate right. I probably lost the weight too quick. It was the offseason, so I wasn't playing too much golf. I think it changed my balance, my set-up and everything like that. I got down to about 190."

His playing weight is closer to 220. He's about there now. He taught himself to play the game, and he wants to find his game again on his own terms.

Part of that, Pettersson said, is to trust his instincts. Last year, after each round here, it meant a stop at McDonald's on his way from the course.

"I'm back there now," he said. "Yep."

He left here last year and drove back to his home in Raleigh with a $918,000 check, stopping at McDonald's on the way, and began thinking about what would come next. He wasn't swayed by the money, and he had no intentions of making the sweeping changes that have sidetracked the careers of so many successful golfers for so many years.

Pettersson has never changed his equipment, never hired a swing coach or a short-game guru or a sports psychologist. He decided to get stronger. To lose some weight. To get in shape and see just how good he could be.

"It's a strange game," he said. "It's the nature of golf to come off playing well and decide to do something to make it even better. Everybody wants to improve. The more you win the more you want to win again. ... You get that rush from winning. It makes you practice harder really."

It makes you do things you never thought you would do. Pettersson decided to work harder. He decided to make his body leaner and more athletic. He decided to push himself to another level.

Golf pushed back, and Pettersson was cruelly left without the one thing he'd always had — the self-taught confidence in his self-taught swing. Without 30 pounds he thought had been holding him back, he was suddenly blown off course.

The road from Greensboro was not straight and narrow, and the road back has been all uphill. Pettersson returned to Sedgefield on Thursday and it all came back to him. Now he hopes his game will, too.

We're three weeks away from the 70th Wyndham Championship, and the defending champion is nearing the end of a lost year on the PGA Tour. Golf has been known to drive men to drink, to drive men insane, to drive them to do things that make no sense.

Carl Pettersson's drive to be a better player made perfect sense at the time. Now it makes no sense at all.

Contact Ed Hardin at 373-7069 or ed.hardin@news-record.com