Wentworth in the past as G-Mac relishing summer challenge

Graeme McDowell is moving quickly on from his missed cut at Wentworth by looking forward to a golfing summer to savour.

Four days after bowing out of the BMW PGA Championship on a course that does not suit his eye, the 2010 US Open champion got a taste of the season ahead at a corporate event. McDowell does not need much persuasion to play his home course Royal Portrush but the Mastercard outing was also acting as a tune-up for the Irish Open (Jun 28-Jul 1), all part of an exciting run of tournaments punctuated by the three remaining majors.

“It’s all good. You just write it off,” McDowell said of the missed cut at Wentworth. “I have a couple of things to work on but this is not a cause to hit the panic button. It is disappointing but the game is not far away. I just need to piece it all together and get ready to go to the US Open and for a big summer.”

McDowell had gone into the BMW PGA having lost the Volvo World Match Play final to Nicolas Colsaerts at Finca Cortesin in Spain the previous Sunday, and the Portrush man is now without a tournament victory since the end of his stellar year in 2010.

His next opportunity comes in America when he will warm up for the US Open by playing the Fedex St Jude Classic in Memphis. But he emphasised that he is not getting hung up about the lack of a ‘W’. “I think you just stay in your processes. You can’t get too obsessed by your results. If I’d have won (the match play), great, but it was still a great week and you can’t fall in love with winning and losing. You just fall in love with the fact that I’m playing well, I’m preparing well, I’m practicising well and I’m moving in the right direction.” There is much to get McDowell excited about Olympic, where he will be bidding to dethrone Rory McIlroy and regain the title he won at Pebble Beach.

“Congressional (last year) probably didn’t turn out to be a pure US Open-type set-up. It was a bit soft. From what I hear I don’t think the USGA are going to want anyone shooting 17 under par this year and I think we could be in for quite a tough US Open test.

“I think the tougher the better, really. I look forward to that type of test. It’s an old school golf course with a huge amount of slope on the fairways. Never been there but obviously looking forward to it and then on to Lytham.”

Or, rather, onto Portrush, with the Irish Open falling between the US Open and Open Championships. Royal Lytham and St Annes on the Lancashire coast hosts the British Open and Darren Clarke’s title defence before the PGA Championship in August pitches up at Kiawah Island on South Carolina’s Atlantic coast.

“I played the Lytham Trophy, 1999 I think it was, and played okay there as well but I haven’t been back since. I’m going to get a couple ofrecces before the week of the tournament.”