Lee Westwood learns from major misses for the Open

World number two Lee Westwood insists he has learned lessons from narrowly missing out on a maiden major title.

The 38-year-old was runner-up at both the Masters and Open last year and has finished in the top three in five of the last seven major championships.

"You learn from experience. It is that one small thing, doing the right thing at the right time," he said.

"It's finer details which get you over the line, not too many dramatic changes but slight improvements here or there."

In the 2009 Open at Turnberry, Westwood missed out on a play-off with Tom Watson and Stewart Cink after three-putting the final green.

"I got out of focus. I played in the present all week, thought about winning the tournament on the last green, hit a bad putt and knocked it eight or nine feet by," he admitted.

Despite so far failing to secure a major, Westwood's overall form in recent years has been so consistent it elevated him to world number one in October.

His lowest finish in the last seven majors he has played was joint 16th at last year's US Open.

Last month, he finished third in this year's US Open as 22-year-old Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy won his first major.

Having opted to miss this week's tournament in France, he will return to action at next week's Scottish Open - a title he won in 1998 at Loch Lomond - which this year will be held at Castle Stuart Golf Links near Inverness for the first time.

"I'll go down to St George's and do some practice while no-one is there and get a feel for it without too many distractions, then play the Scottish Open before getting back to St George's on the Tuesday to then get going," he said.

"In the back of my mind is the Open Championship but I will try not to think about that until the week of the event. The Scottish Open is a big tournament and one I'd like to win again."

Westwood carded rounds of 76 and 75 to miss the cut when Ben Curtis won the Open the last time it was held at Sandwich in 2003 and said of the experience: "I didn't play that well but I was going through a bit of a slump then so I don't really worry about it that much.

"I won a couple of amateur tournaments there but I generally play links golf really well."