Interview: Graeme McDowell, golfer and US Open champion

Published on Sunday 5 February 2012 00:00

Graeme McDowell’s 2010 achievements weighed heavily last year, he confesses to John Huggan

it’s one of golf’s toughest challenges: immediately following up the previous day’s low round with another just as good. But it isn’t the toughest of all. Multiply that one great score by 100 or so and suddenly you’ve got an unforgettable and almost unrepeatable season to live up to.

Which was pretty much exactly the near-no-win situation Graeme McDowell was in at the start of last season. Twice a winner on the European Tour, US Open champion and the man who clinched the Ryder Cup for Europe in 2010, the 32-year-old from Portrush was under unfamiliar – and perhaps unrealistic – pressure to maintain his newfound status as one of the game’s premier players.

In the end, while he managed that OK, 2011 is not a year he will look back on with much pleasure. Although McDowell is today ranked the world’s 11th-best golfer – evidence enough of a continuing and consistently high level of performance – for much of last year the game was a struggle. As his compatriots Rory McIlroy and Darren Clarke memorably marched to their maiden major titles, McDowell was strangely becalmed.

“It was obviously a frustrating year for me,” he says with a sigh. “It was always going to be difficult to follow up 2010. Much as I tried to promise myself that I wouldn’t fall into the trap of trying to emulate what I achieved two years ago, I did on occasion. It’s hard not to compare.

“All of which is not to say that my play last year was horrible. I added up my world ranking points at the end of the season and it wasn’t that bad. I was comfortably in the top 30 on that count. In years gone by, I’d have probably looked at that as a pretty good season.”

Indeed, 2011 started well enough for McDowell. And, by year’s end, a string of high finishes showed he was close to the form that had carried him to such success 12 months earlier. But the bit in the middle was none of the above. From perhaps mid-March through the USPGA Championship five months later, the former University of Alabama star was a shadow of his 2010 self. More than once he played himself into contention at big events, only to, as he puts it himself, “blowout dramatically”.

“The Players Championship was a perfect example,” he says. “I got a terrible bounce into the water on the last hole of the third round and that set the tone for the Sunday afternoon – I shot 78 – and really knocked the wind out of me. It was so disappointing to finish like that having led for so long.

“The final round of the Scottish Open was similar. I was right in contention during the last round then made a nine on a par-5. I went from leading to finishing 20th. In Wales I did the same on the weekend. I went a long time without feeling like I was getting everything out of my game. I’d be sitting there on Sunday night – drowning my sorrows with a couple of cold beers – knowing I had two and a half or three good rounds yet got nothing out of it.

“I’d be 35th or 40th despite being high on the greens-in-regulation statistic. I was third in GIR through two rounds at the Masters yet I missed the cut. I was second in GIR at Wentworth and missed the cut. Stuff like that was driving me mad. So it wasn’t any one technical aspect of my game, mostly it was ‘ma heid’. I just needed to see a good result, a top ten, to get me moving in the right direction. But I was thinking so badly. I started to need and want it too much. I was trying to be too perfect. I just needed it too much.

“To play my best golf I need my patience level to be high and my expectation level to be low. Last year I was exactly the opposite. My expectations were high and my patience was low. It was a recipe for disaster.”

McDowell’s season reached its nadir at the USPGA Championship in Atlanta, where he missed the cut after rounds of 74 and 78.

“That was rock bottom,” he admits. “But the Open wasn’t much better. I knew at Royal St Georges that something was up with me. In practice there I didn’t miss a shot. I was excited and couldn’t wait to get going. The course isn’t my favourite – I think it’s a little bit ‘Mickey Mouse’ – but it is still a links, a form of the game I’m obviously very familiar with.

“So I was primed and ready to go. I stood on the first tee on Thursday and pull-hooked my 3-wood into the left rough. I got a flier from there and was through the back of the green. Then I duffed my chip and made a double-bogey. I walked off wondering what had just happened. That was how tightly wound I was.

“Eventually, we had a sit-down – myself and Kenny (Comboy), my caddie – and shook things up a bit. Most of it was me thinking badly as opposed to playing badly. I was questioning things when there was no need to.

“But you need a few breaks, a few good results, to get things moving in the right direction. And I wasn’t getting any of that.”

As ever in golf, the solution to what appeared to be a complicated problem was actually deceptively simple. “The turning point came when (coach) Clive Tucker came to see me in Orlando,” explains McDowell. “He sorted my basics – posture, aim, alignment, grip, stance – out for me. I was aiming ten yards right of my target with the ball back in my stance. I wasn’t in a position where I could get the clubface nice and neutral. I just couldn’t make the swings I wanted to make. Now, though, I’m back to shaping the ball like I did in 2010. Last year my ball flight was all over the place.

“From the Barclays event on I started to relax. I was enjoying my golf and hitting the ball well. And I played decently. I really got going, though, at the Dunhill Links, where I finished third. It was such a relaxed atmosphere and just what I needed. But something happened at the USPGA. I removed a 100kg barbell from my shoulders and started to get going again.”

Which is just as well. Along with the rest of the elite-level European players, McDowell is desperate to be part of the side that will defend the Ryder Cup at Medinah in Chicago this September.

“The Ryder Cup is obviously a big priority,” he says with a smile. “If I’m on the team I’ll know I’ve had a good season. We’re going to have an unbelievable side. We have so much strength in depth and it’s even more special playing the Ryder Cup in the US. It’s like stepping into the lion’s den. To beat them in America is a huge goal for me.”

That’s more like it. Looking forward, not astern, Graeme McDowell is definitely back on track.

Logged in as:

Comment here. Start typing your comment here:

Post comment

Please adhere to our Community guidelines

Your view

Please sign in to be able to comment on this story.