G-Mac: I’ll par Pinehurst to death
US Opens are always a grind, that’s the way the tournament organisers at the USGA like it as they present the toughest challenge of the year. It is one McDowell has met excellently, both at Pebble Beach four years ago when he became a major champion and again at Olympic Club two years later, finishing runner-up to Webb Simpson.
This year in North Carolina, on the course Donald Ross built on the sandhills here in 1901, it will be a different kind of grind, the traditional rough dispensed with and browning fairways that look more at home in The Open Championship.
All very different from the Pinehurst McDowell faced when making his US Open debut in 2005 as Ben Crenshaw and Bill Coore have remodeled the classic track in the image Ross intended, paring the visually spectacular par-70, 7,562 yards layout back to the Scottish designer’s initial, rigorous examination of a golfer’s abilities.
One where, unless it rains heavily, the driver is not necessarily the go-to club off the tee and the shortest iron possible is not always the ideal club.
“Length is going to be an advantage in places around here,” McDowell conceded following a practice round yesterday in the company of Shane Lowry. “It’s going to give the guys opportunities I’m not going to have but length can also open up some problems because I think when you get a little too aggressive into some of these flag positions you’re going to wish that you didn’t bother hitting it 320 down the middle. You’re going to wish that maybe you had 6-iron in your hand and you had to play away from the flag.
“So I don’t think necessarily getting short irons in your hand you’re going to make this golf course any easier because I think flags are going to be elusive at the best of times and it doesn’t matter whether you’ve got 6-iron or 8-iron in your hand, you’re going to be playing away from the flags to try and make four.
“This will be a low birdie-count US Open I believe. I don’t think there’ll be a lot of birdies made around this golf course. You’re going to have to really par this place to death.
“The guy who makes the most pars is going to win this week.”
It will take not just a par machine but one who can scramble as well and that appeals to McDowell, when asked if that suited him.
“I think it does,” he said. “As opposed to Merion last year (when he missed a US Open cut for the first time in eight appearances) which got too wet and the rough was too penal, this week I feel like I can keep the ball in play and be disciplined in my iron play and scramble.
“I had a weekend’s good scrambling down in Memphis. I didn’t hit the ball my best during the last two rounds but in a funny way I got the workout with my short game that I needed last week because it doesn’t matter how good you play, you’ll not hit 14 greens this week.
“I challenge anyone to hit more than 12 greens a day here, it’s that type of track. Twelve greens would be a great ball-striking round, I think, around here and there’ll be six, seven, eight scrambling opportunities per day and the guy who scrambles best will win.”
When the American sun parches fairways, a US Open can be an unforgiving at times unfair challenge, as Shinnecock Hills on New York’s Long Island proved back in 2004. Pinehurst this year holds no such fears for McDowell.
“Unfair is not really a word that comes to mind, just frustratingly difficult and you’ve just got to get ‘frustrating’ out of your vocabulary straight away. You’ve got to go with ‘yes, it’s difficult but it’s difficult for everyone’.
“I’m going to hit my spots and it’s going to go over the back and I’m going to hit my spots and it’ll roll off the front and I’m going to have to accept the pins have to be red-lighters and play away from them and try my best to get the ball up and down and I’m just going to have to accept that’s not going to happen all the time.
So, just got to dig in this week. It’s hard, just hard. You can’t get frustrated and you can’t get impatient.”
Something else that’s very different from Pinehurst in 2005, as McDowell recalled his US Open debut.
“It (was) kind of like playing with your eyes open. I remember so little about 2005 because it was very hard to have the peace of mind to understand what it was you were doing, you were so enthralled with everything else, outside of the ropes, the golf course and a US Open, and all of this show that is a major championship.
“Nowadays you put the blinkers on and I was like a horse that was too busy looking around me to concentrate on the finish line. Nowadays I’m a guy who’s got the blinkers on and knows how to concentrate on the task at hand.
“So I guess from that point of view I’m a very different player in that I can focus on the task at hand and have the patience and discipline to execute.
“You still need to hit the golf well. You can talk patience and discipline all you like but if you don’t position the ball off the tee and hit your irons well enough to correct side of the flags... you need everything working this week.”
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