McDowell in world top ten

GRAEME McDOWELL has joined the world’s top ten for the first time in his career after his hard-earned victory in the Andalucia Masters at Valderrama.

He has improved three spots from 13th to 10th, one spot behind fellow Ulsterman Rory McIlroy with Pádraig Harrington next best of the Irish on 19th.

However, the 31 year-old Portrush golfer has even greater things in mind. He arrived in Shanghai last evening after a marathon journey that began by private plane out of Gibraltar on Sunday night followed by a 12-hour flight from Paris to the Chinese capital. He knows he will be a lot more tired than the majority of his rivals, who have been largely inactive over the past few weeks, most especially new world number one Lee Westwood, who plays only his second tournament in three months.

It has baffled many observers as to how he could displace Tiger Woods at the head of affairs after such a long spell of inactivity. Few pretend to understand just how these rankings work, but they are based on consistency over a two-year period and in that regard it seems the Englishman holds the edge over all others. He finished 11th in his last event, the Dunhill Links at St Andrews, in the first week of October not having played since the WGC-Bridgestone Invitational at the beginning of August.

Americans refuse to take Westwood’s elevation to the top spot seriously, dismissing it as “a vagary” of the system and “controversial.” On the face of it, they seem to have a point while overlooking the basic rationale that it operates on the basis of taking into account results over the past two years, progressively discounted, and divided by the number of tournaments. The US Tour, like all others, subscribed to this way of doing things.

In any case, the situation could well change over the next week when Westwood at last returns to action in the $7m (€5.04m) HSBC Champions event in Shanghai. Also in the field are Woods, Phil Mickelson and Martin Kaymer and any one of them could usurp Westwood by Monday next!

For now, Graeme McDowell doesn’t entertain any such lofty ambitions with leading the European Tour’s order of merit at the end of the month as his primary target.

“The Race to Dubai is my main goal for the next four weeks and Valderrama was a great start to my campaign,” he said. “I have four events left and go to Shanghai with a bit of momentum. It’s been a great season but I really wanted to put a bit of polish on it, I really wanted to finish strong and not just cruise to the end. I want to sit down over my Christmas dinner and look back and think, that was a great finish to a great season and that was my goal coming out here this week.”

McDowell, now 528,581 points behind Kaymer on the order of merit but with massive amounts still to play for, readily admitted he went through a valley period after winning the US Open at Pebble Beach and that he just couldn’t concentrate on his golf. However, the famous events of the Ryder Cup followed by his win in Spain prove that’s all in the past now and he is confident that there will be no repeat on this occasion.

“There isn’t any way I will experience a low like I experienced after Pebble”, he declared. “That win was a dream come true and there’s no other way to describe it. I won the Wales Open before the US and I felt very different after than I did after the US Open. That was huge, it was a lot for my brain to handle, the emotions and everything that went with it.

“This one is different. I will use it as a stepping stone to go on to big things over the next four weeks. As I said, my game isn’t 100% and I have a little bit of work to do. It’s a different golf course in Shanghai but it’s great to hang tough and win around Valderrama. You look at the names who have won here, it’s a very special list and it’s great to have mine among them.”

The Andalucian event was the last on European soil for the 2010 season and I understand it will retain that status next year although the Valderrama company owned for many years by the Patino family is about to be bought by a consortium led by Greg Norman, with a major refurbishment of the course in the offing. The lay-out once again proved its worth on this occasion. It is fractionally under 7, 000 yards which is quite short by modern standards and yet the winning score was three under with only three other players able to dip below par. It is all about clever course management and astute ball placement and it was good to see not only McDowell but also fellow Irishmen Gareth Maybin and Damien McGrane as those to cope best.

“Gareth impressed the hell out of me over the weekend”, commented McDowell. “He’s not the greatest ball striker of all time but he’s got one of the greatest short games I’ve ever seen. It was very impressive how he hung in there. He will win multiple golf tournaments on the European Tour and while I’m sure that he and Damien are disappointed that they didn’t finish as well as they would have liked, it was like a war of attrition out there, it wasn’t match-play, just a golfer against the course and whoever got beaten up the least was going to be the last man standing. Compared to Pebble, I was the guy who got beaten up the least that weekend and I guess it was the same this time.”

At least seven Irishmen will be in the field for the Dubai World Championship on November 25-28. They are led by McDowell, 2nd; McIlroy, 14th; Harrington, 18th; Darren Clarke, 27th; McGrane, 32nd; Peter Lawrie, 34th and Maybin, 35th.

The fact that Shane Lowry has earned €492,528 and is still one spot outside the automatic top 60 who make it to Dubai is its own indication of how difficult it is to reach the required standard.

McDowell is joined in this week’s field in Shanghai by McIlroy and Harrington.