Westwood takes tough stand on Straits

THE PGA Championship week could hardly have opened on a brighter note for Lee Westwood.

He interrupted his practice yesterday to listen to the race at Windsor where his horse Tequila Sheila was running. The Irish-trained (K.R. Burke) and ridden (Kieran Fallon) horse romped home at 7-1 and there were some quiet celebrations in the International Sports Management (ISM), team with manager Chubby Chandler and Darren Clarke among the part owners. Between them, they have around 16 horses in training.

Whether that’s the end of the good news for the 31-year-old Englisman remains to be seen. He has already noticed how difficult it is to find this golf course as he quipped.

“I saw most of Wisconsin this morning. I’m staying 15 minutes away but it turned into 50 minutes. I’ll have to get a yardage chart out and try to find my way around. It’s a bit like the course, really. I suppose there’s more than one way of playing it.”

He is clearly uneasy on that score and admitted as much.

“I was told coming here that there were 10 really difficult holes and eight impossible ones. I’m trying to work out which are the difficult holes.”

The Englishman was making no secret of his belief that this is probably the toughest course he has ever played and that indeed “it may be too difficult and too long”.

While he wouldn’t quite go along with the American view that Whistling Straits qualifies as a links course, Westwood conceded it is ‘typical’ of a links, ie it changes character dramatically, depending on the wind.

“You’re not having the tide changing the wind so that will make it fairer than playing a links somewhere like St Andrews, where you can play the front nine downwind and the wind can change on you and you play the second nine downwind.

“I was trying to figure out what it reminded me of but it’s quite unique. It could favour European golfers but if you look at the quality of players around the world, everybody seems to be able to play in all conditions.

“You’ve got to have a good all-round game for all conditions.”

It’s going to be a very difficult course for the players to walk and six hour rounds and counting may well be the order of the day on Thursday and Friday.

And if it’s tough for the golfers, spare a thought for the spectators for whom it may prove a back-breaker.

Westwood acknowledges: “The rough is probably not as thick as at other PGAs. They have taken the slopes and the wind into consideration and so the greens are not as fast as they normally would be. And they have set the course up fantastically well; the rough is not ridiculous. Some of the fairways are a little narrow. At the 15th (518 yards, par 4), you have about 10 yards to land your second shot.

“Yesterday it was into the wind and I played driver, three iron and sand iron. So there will be people with complaints but it won’t do any good.”

Still in philosophical mood, Westwood’s idea of the winner will be “a straight hitter with a good iron game, a great short game and a wonderful putter. Me?

“Hopefully.”