DANNY Willett admits he has found it hard – and at times impossible – to ignore the criticism which comes with being a major champion struggling to rediscover his top form.

Willett became the first English winner of the Masters for 20 years with his dramatic victory at Augusta National 12 months ago, taking advantage of defending champion Jordan Spieth’s collapse with a flawless final round of 67.

The 29-year-old Yorkshireman also finished third in the BMW PGA Championship and second in the Italian Open, but was struggling for form by the time of his Ryder Cup debut and failed to win a single point.

So far in 2017 he has failed to convert a three-shot 54-hole lead in Malaysia, finished 69th in the 77-man field in the WGC-Mexico Championship and failed to reach the knockout stages of the WGC-Match Play in Austin.

And such struggles have inevitably not gone unnoticed on social media, where a handful of Willett’s 114,000 followers have not been afraid to lambast the world number 17.

“You’ve got to realise it’s a very, very small percentage unfortunately of people that aren’t very positive about things,” Willett said.

“You’ve got to take it all with a pinch of salt – sometimes it’s definitely better to just turn your phone off and put it away so you don’t read it, but sometimes if something is said that is out of order, I think you should say something back.”

Willett concedes he may have fallen into the trap of placing more pressure on himself as a major champion, but insists the work he is doing on his swing was not a reaction to the win.

“I was trying not to have higher expectations but I think that’s kind of crept in a little bit,” he added. “There is pressure you put on yourself and the pressure others do, and expectations that because you’ve done it once you should be able to do it every week, and then you obviously start to think a little like that.

“The best part is having the jacket, being Masters champion. The worst part is when you pitch up and don’t quite play like you are a major champion – that’s the hardest thing to get over.

“My game is something I’m always working on. We’ve worked very hard over the last three years to take the left side of the golf course out of play.

“A lot of my stuff, the reason we do that is to protect the back.

“You are always trying to get better. Anybody who says they are trying to stay the same is lying. You’re always trying to get better and timing wise it’s just one of them things.

“Some days are better than others, some weeks are better.

“Unfortunately I’ve had a little spell where it’s not quite gone as good as the previous few months, but if you look at the previous few months before that it was almost impossible to keep it at that level,” Willett added,