ORLANDO, FLORIDA | Imagine the Open Championship being played in your hometown – your home country – for the first time in more than 70 years and, as a professional golfer, being forced to stand on the outside and look in.
That’s where Graeme McDowell finds himself these days as the clock ticks closer to the Open Championship’s long-awaited return to Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland this July.
This is no ordinary Open Championship, not that any of them are ordinary. But this one is different, parameter-expanding, taking the race for the Claret Jug away from England and Scotland, for the first time since 1951 when Max Faulkner won at Royal Portrush.
One of the reasons the Open is finally going back to Northern Ireland is McDowell.
Along with Rory McIlroy and Darren Clarke, McDowell’s success as a player and then his committed devotion to persuading the R&A to bring the Open to Portrush was critical to getting it there. It wasn’t the only reason – new roads were built and new holes were constructed – but McDowell understood how much what will happen in July means to Portrush, to Northern Ireland and to the Open itself.
“… it’s going to be a special summer, if I can get myself there. … I just got to get out of my own way and have a little fun with it and not have things like that rattle around in my head too much.” – Graeme McDowell, on trying to qualify for the 2019 Open Championship at Royal Portrush in his native Northern Ireland
Now, if he can only qualify.
“The big goal this year is to be at Portrush and to play the Open Championship in my hometown six weeks after Pebble (Beach), the U.S. Open,” said McDowell, who won his only major championship at Pebble Beach in 2010.
“So it’s going to be a special summer, if I can get myself there. And the game’s there right now, I just got to get out of my own way and have a little fun with it and not have things like that rattle around in my head too much.”
McDowell is 39 now and in a different part of his life. He and his wife, Kristin, have two young children, which allows him to be home at night during Bay Hill week. The on-course challenge for McDowell is competing against players who are significantly younger and significantly longer than he is.
He has to pick his spots and McDowell has been effective doing that, taking advantage of courses where his 286-yard driving average, which ranks 169th on tour, isn’t a drawback. Still, he’s chasing his old form, having not posted a top-10 finish on the tour since a T10 at the Shriners Hospitals for Children Open in the fall of 2017.
Ranked as high as fourth in the world in 2011, McDowell is now 259th with a resume that includes multiple unchecked boxes when it comes to Open Championship eligibility.
McDowell was pleasantly surprised when he turned up at the Arnold Palmer Invitational and learned it was an Open qualifying event, which means there are potentially three spots available to players who finish in the top 10 at Bay Hill and were not previously qualified to play at Royal Portrush.
An opening 68 in the API was an encouraging start though McDowell isn’t looking down the road, forcing himself to stay in the present. A second-round 75 pushed McDowell down the leaderboard again.
“If I let Portrush get into my mind the balance will become imbalance. I haven’t played very well historically with a gun to my head, if you like, I’m more of a guy who likes to try and look at the big picture and let things happen,” McDowell said.
“I haven’t done a good job the last couple years of just trying to get certain things out of my head. Like trying to get into the top 125 in the FedExCup and get myself back up in the top 100 in the world. I haven’t done a good job when I put pressure on myself. So I’m trying to do the opposite right now. I’m just trying to take a little pressure off myself and just realize that I love this game, I love being out there and I love doing what I do.”
McDowell would love to be back home with a tee time at Royal Portrush in July.
The Open Championship is calling him home.
Top photo: Graeme McDowell hits his driver on the 18th hole during the second round of the Arnold Palmer Invitational at Bay Hill Club & Lodge. Reinhold Matay, USA Today