Donald questions 'cautious' course set-up

Nick Dougherty thanked his father and Luke Donald delivered a message to the European Tour after they both shone on the opening day of the BMW Championship at Wentworth.

The pair had five-under-par rounds of 67 to join fellow Englishman Paul Casey and South African Andrew McLardy out in front of the star-studded field.

But while Donald was delighted to have kept a bogey off his card – and even more so to have hit all 18 greens in regulation – he wants the West Course to be made harder for the remaining 54 holes.

Since last year’s event, Ernie Els has added 30 bunkers and nearly 250 yards to the world-famous test, but after days of rain it was decided that two of the tees should be moved forward, including the third by 77 yards.

“The European Tour were cautious in the way they set up the course,” said Donald, who is playing his first tournament of the season on this side of the Atlantic.

“I think you would not have seen that in America. I think people on the whole were excited by the changes and a few times it negated that by putting the tees up.

“It really didn’t seem to play too difficult. I was thinking coming down the 18th that when I do play in Europe the courses generally are a little more generous off the tee, the rough isn’t quite as thick and they don’t tuck the pins quite as much as they do on the US tour.

“You can short-side yourself out here and still get up and down and make par and it’s not too big of a deal.

“At the US Open you’re not going to get away with it. I think that is part of the reason why we haven’t been very successful in majors, especially the US Open.”

The last European winner of that title was Tony Jacklin in 1970, and no European has won any major since Paul Lawrie at the 1999 Open.

Dougherty, so keen to make a Ryder Cup debut in September just four years after he partnered Donald in the Walker Cup, instantly gave credit to his father Roger – and that was the least he could do after what happened on Tuesday.

The 24-year-old from Liverpool now lives in Richmond and presumed his father’s Mercedes would fit in his two-tier hydraulic garage, so told him to park it there.

“Now he’s got to get a new one because it crushed his boot,” he said.

“He’s driven 250 miles and ruined his motor, so this is a little bit of payback for him, I suppose.

“My coach is David Leadbetter, but my Dad taught me since I was a little kid and arguably knows my game better than anyone else – better than me.

“I have a tendency to make things more difficult than they are and he made things a lot more simple for me. We worked on things we used to concentrate on.

“I’ve been struggling lately. I’m desperate to play n the Ryder Cup and I’ve been beating myself up and finding it very, very stressful recently.

“People obviously look at you and think: ‘You’ve got a great job. How can you be upset? You should be smiling all the way around.’

“But it doesn’t always feel that way when you’re playing and it’s very frustrating.”

That explained his delight at making birdie putts of 20 and 10 feet on the last two greens because it turned a good day into a really good one for the player currently holding the 10th and last automatic place in the Ryder Cup race.

Donald is fifth and Casey eighth, though the Surrey golfer would have been higher if he had beaten Thomas Bjorn at the Irish Open on Monday rather than three-putted the last to lose by one.

It was the second week running Casey had given himself the chance to win and not done, but he is contenting himself with the form he has shown, especially so far this week in an event which means an awful lot to him.

“This is the first ever professional tournament that I watched live,” he said. “I came to many PGA Championships and Match Plays and watched the greats of the game – Seve (Ballesteros), Faldo and all the rest – play down these fairways.

“I would dearly love to have a good finish. What some would think are disappointments over the last couple of weeks I actually enjoyed. I enjoy being in the mix and here I am in the mix again.”