McDowell bags an albatross

LEVEL PAR round a course as difficult as The K Club, especially when the wind is blowing strongly and the rough is at its most intimidating, is very respectable indeed.

But 25 year-old Graeme McDowell performed in such a manner yesterday that he could have even threatened Darren Clarke’s untouchable course record of 60 set in the 1999 Smurfit European Open.

It was, quite simply, a bizarre round consisting of an albatross two, an eagle three, two birdies, a double bogey, five bogeys and just seven pars. That adds up to 72 and left the Portrush golfer shaking his head in bewilderment. Still, he wasn’t complaining about his score for he was out in by far the worst of the conditions and was a whole lot better than Padraig Harrington, who was completely drained after his heroic victory in the Barclays Westchester Classic at the weekend and struggled to get one shot inside the dreaded 80 mark.

So Darren Clarke, out early in the day when the greens were at their truest and receptive after more overnight rain, remained the leading Irishman with a three under par 69 until Gary Murphy, the Kilkenny man attached to the Heritage club, eagled the 18th for a 68. Murphy, Clarke and Damien McGrane, 72, were the Irishmen to finish under par on a sometimes wet and always windy day.

“I don’t think I’ve ever had any day like that on the golf course before”, McDowell agreed. “This was my second albatross, after the 18th at the French Open in ‘03. It’s a pretty rare bird and very special. The opening three were playing pretty difficult and I was three over going to the 4th. My caddy and I decided I should try to free things up and then came a shot of 267 yards to the par five 4th. I was between a three and a five wood and decided to cut in a little three which ended at the bottom of the cup. You can hit as good a shot as you like but you need a lot of luck to find the hole from that distance. We thought it had actually rolled off the back edge and were perfectly content with that until the crowd went pretty nuts and then we knew.”

The K Club greens came in for a deal of criticism from many players, especially those out in the afternoon, with McDowell suffering quite a bit and claiming that “they were very bumpy around the holes, they were spiked and there were heel prints. All three of us struggled from close range. I missed a few three-footers but to be honest I’m content enough to be even par. Obviously I had some nice breaks, not least the albatross and the pitch shot from 60 yards at the 10th that went in for eagle off the first bounce. I don’t think I’ve ever holed two shots like that in the same round of golf before.”

Coming off such a great win in New York, Harrington was never going to be down in the dumps and accepted his 79 with admirable equanimity. He had predicted something like this and wasn’t surprised or even particularly disappointed: “It was very difficult to go out there in the wind. It was a day for fighting but I’m mentally drained. This was the kind of week I would definitely have taken off were it not for the tournament being in Ireland. I tried hard but it just wasn’t there. With the wind getting up and the greens being ever so bumpy with the heel prints in the afternoon, it was a day when you really wanted your head screwed on properly. I couldn’t see it going in from a foot not to mind any other distance. I can’t remember when I’ve ever three-putted five times before.”

Harrington managed only one birdie but had four bogeys in six holes on the turn for home, three-putting from less than a couple of yards at the 12th.

He admitted that he hoped “to get away with it over the first couple of days so that I’d be fine by the weekend but that was not to happen. I had zero preparation and no focus at all.”

Darren Clarke is just happy to be back playing golf. He insists that he still has no level of expectation for the week, even if he did attribute an admirable short game to the work he has been doing on the pitching green at his home over the past month or so as he helped his wife Heather through a difficult part of her illness.

“Anything under par out there is a good score so I have to be happy,” he said. “Heather’s battling on and doing better. She’s been through a tough time but is home now and has turned the corner.

“I hurt my knee at the Forest of Arden and it’s a little bit sore and caused me to make a few bad swings today. Every time I come back here, it seems to get tougher and tougher so the familiarity is diminishing because it is so hard and penal now.

“My concentration was average but I got it around. I didn’t get as annoyed with some of the bad shots as I normally would have done. My thoughts were wavering at times but that’s only natural.”

Harrington wasn’t the only Irish disaster story. Paul McGinley would be expected to do particularly well at a club where he was tournament professional for several years but he slumped to a 78, musing that he has undertaken too rigorous a schedule at this time of the year and would have been better off missing last week’s French Open.

And Peter Lawrie, who qualified so spectacularly for the Open Championship at Sunningdale on Monday, was a late withdrawal because of an infection caused by the extraction of a wisdom tooth the following day.