McGinley putts it in perspective
It was a whole lot worse for Graeme McDowell, who crashed to an 81 to come home in 80th place with only two players behind him.
Both tried to put a positive spin on things but the sad reality is that not alone McGinley and McDowell, but also Padraig Harrington who missed the cut by three shots, were found badly wanting. As developments on the final afternoon demonstrated, the Pinehurst course was a real brute with none of the field able to cope with its unique difficulties and making anything remotely close to par look a great score. Stewart Cink shot 69 but he was never remotely in contention and so was under little or no pressure.
The same, of course, applies to McGinley and McDowell and they just weren’t able to cope. To be fair, McGinley’s rounds of 76, 72, 71 and 74 weren’t all that bad in themselves and he insisted they would have been a whole lot better had he not had to battle a stone cold putter through the four rounds.
“I had five three-putts today and haven’t broken 31 putts all week and you can’t play a US Open doing that,” he maintained. “But I hit the ball well and I enjoyed the week. It was my first experience of playing the last round of a US Open. The atmosphere was electric and playing with Ernie (Els) today, the buzz was fantastic. The putting, to be honest, became a mental thing with me. The pin positions were intimidating and if you misjudged your putt, you were gone off the green at the far side. That’s where my three-putting was coming from, there was a fear of going for the putts.
“I had played in the US Open before but never at weekends or experienced pins like those, they’re much tougher for the last two days. I hold my hands up and admit I was intimidated by the pins but I won’t be the next time. Don’t get me wrong, I think they’re great, but I’ve never seen pin positions like these before. I’ve never seen them so close to the edge, I’d love to see that a lot more in Europe. If we had one pin like those at home, everybody would be crying about it but that’s wrong. If we want to compete in the US Open, we need to get tougher with the pin positions. When I think of how badly I putted and still finished 43rd, a lot of positives come out of the week.
“I’ll give you an example,” the Dubliner explained. “I played the first hole perfectly, 15-footer for birdie. At the 2nd, I drove it in the rough. I put my next just where I wanted it to be just left of the green. I had a chip shot of 50 feet and played a beautiful pitch and run with a little bit of check and it nearly went in. It stopped three feet behind the hole but as I walk up it catches the slope and rolls way off the green. Now I’m coming uphill and then downhill and leave it six feet short and make double - I played the hole well and still took double! I might be 38 years of age but in terms of experience in these championships, I’m still pretty young and this is still a big learning curve for me. Having said that, I really enjoyed it and it was a lot of fun.”
At 25, Graeme McDowell still has time very much on his side and will use all of it to try and develop his game to an extent where shooting 81, would be out of the question. It was something of an understatement to suggest he was “a little disappointed”, as he claimed that he played pretty well for three days and got very little out of it.
“I’ve not been on top of my game and came out today and discovered how difficult Pinehurst can be when you’re not hitting it in the right places. But I’m still feeling very good about my game, there’s been a lot of improvement and have some great tournaments to look forward to over the next few weeks.”
McDowell had the pleasure yesterday of playing with Fred Couples. As he pointed out, the fans love him and that spiced the atmosphere for a young man playing in the event for the first time. Yet, it failed to motivate him and to be honest Graeme looked a tad overawed by the whole thing. Very few words were exchanged between them mainly because, as McDowell ruefully put it, “he was up on the green while I was chopping about in the bunkers.”
“He’s a great guy and is as chilled out on the golf course as seems everywhere else and I couldn’t have asked for a better partner.”
McDowell readily admitted that he needs to make changes to his game, to learn how to hit the ball from left to right and a lot softer. It’s a work in progress but it doesn’t start and stop with his long game and he also appreciates that he needs to hole a far great share of putts to succeed at this level.
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