McDowell has pluck of the Irish

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 21/06/2010 (5822 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

PEBBLE BEACH, Calif. — Sometimes, when winning the U.S. Open is too much to ask, the best you can do is not quite lose it as badly as the other fellows.

Graeme McDowell, like everyone else who dared to be under par at Pebble Beach during the 110th playing of America’s national championship, found himself drawn inexorably backward until, even as the man holding the trophy Sunday night — by definition the best of them, all week — he was just what the scorecard prescribes for competent play, and nothing more.

Level par.

But there’ll be no apologies for that, or for laying up with an nine-iron at the par-five 18th, when the last man with a chance to catch him, Frenchman Gregory Havret, had failed to make birdie up ahead.

McDowell, the 30-year-old from Portrush, Northern Ireland — a five-time winner on the European Tour — two-putted from 20 feet behind the hole at Pebble’s signature closing par-five to shoot a just-good-enough 74, and do what neither third-round leader Dustin Johnson nor a handful of the game’s greatest players could do: play the golf course to a draw, for 72 holes.

He is the first European-based professional to win the U.S. Open since England’s Tony Jacklin, 40 years ago.

"I think there’ll be a few pints of Guinness going down tonight back home," he said. "They might extend drinking hours a bit.

"I’ve dreamed all my life of having two putts to win a U.S. Open and I had 20 feet for it. And now they’ve given me this thing, and to win it on one of the most incredible golf courses on the planet — it’s surreal."

Havret, the last man with a chance, once McDowell found the manageable first cut of rough with his tee shot at the dangerous 18th, splashed out of the bunker fronting the green to 10 feet. If he’d made the putt, McDowell would have had to follow suit. But he missed, and the stocky Ulsterman played smartly for par to clinch it.

"That’s a bad putt," the 33-year-old Havret said. "Probably the worst of the week. You don’t want to make a big mistake hitting it too strong, and I just pulled it."

"Greg was unlucky to bogey 17," McDowell said — though most everyone did — "and then not make (birdie) at 18, but once he didn’t get up and down, my plan changed. I had 220 to the front edge and as soon as I saw Greg miss his putt, I completely bailed out of that idea."

His father, who’d never been to Pebble Beach before, ran on the green to embrace him.

"It’s such a difficult golf course," McDowell said, having survived the pursuit from some of golf’s biggest names. "There’s bogeys out there, doesn’t matter how good you are. It’s just difficult to make birdies. You go chasing and you’ll make bogeys."

Or worse.

It was Johnson’s Open to lose, and he wasted no time losing it, authoring one of the greatest collapses in major championship lore.

The incredible long-hitter from South Carolina saw his three-shot overnight lead go poof with a triple-bogey at the second hole, where he needed three chips to escape the deep greenside rough — one of them left-handed — and didn’t even come close to holing a three-footer for double-bogey. All McDowell did was make two pars and he was tied for the lead.

Johnson then hit his tee shot at the third 100 yards left, so far off line a search party couldn’t find his golf ball in the allowable five minutes, so he had to go back to the tee, found a bunker with his third shot, double-bogeyed the hole and was gone. Then he hit it in the ocean off the fourth tee for good measure. By the time he’d putted out at the 12th hole, he’d given away nine strokes, and was off the map, en route to a final-round 82 and a tie for eighth.

The first of those disasters let every man and his dog back into the hunt. Of particular interest, he let Ernie Els, Phil Mickelson and Tiger Woods in, but Woods’s still-fickle golf game wasn’t up to the task, this day, and he finished tied for fourth, three strokes behind.

McDowell kept plugging away.

"I kept my head down pretty good, I thought, until I bogeyed 10 and then I had a little peek at the scoreboard," he said. "But I stuck to my game plan, did my job. I made some great swings on the back nine, I really did."

Woods’ run at the title ended almost before it began. He bogeyed the first, fourth and sixth holes — essentially losing two shots to the field at the latter, which was an easy birdie, and surrendered a number of eagles, and even a Shaun Micheel double-eagle Sunday.

As it turned out, when McDowell started to wobble with bogeys at the ninth and 10th, if Woods had played even-par golf through 12 holes, he’d have been a shot out of the lead. Instead, he was 4-over for the day at that point — soon to be five.

 

— Canwest News Service

 

Leaderboard

Graeme McDowell 284 E

Gregory Havret 285 +1

Ernie Els 286 +2

Phil Mickelson 287 +3

Tiger Woods 287 +3

Matt Kuchar 288 +4

Davis Love III 288 +4

Brandt Snedeker 289 +5

Martin Kaymer 289 +5

Alex Cejka 289 +5

Dustin Johnson 289 +5

Sean O’Hair 290 +6

Tim Clark 290 +6

Ben Curtis 291 +7

Justin Leonard 291 +7

Peter Hanson 292 +8

a-Scott Langley 292 +8

Lee Westwood 292 +8

Jim Furyk 292 +8

Mike Weir 307 +23