Growing up in the seaside town of Portrush in Northern Ireland prepared Graeme McDowell for Pebble Beach. It also helped him become the first European to win a U.S. Open in 40 years.
On Sunday at Pebble Beach, when the elements were tame but the course setup was brutal, it took a man who is used to playing in wind, cold and rain to conquer this course next to the ocean. While formidable contenders such as Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and Dustin Johnson were throwing up all over beautiful Pebble, McDowell remained in control despite back-to-back bogeys along the “Cliffs of Doom.”
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“I don’t know who’s leaking more oil: the field or British Petroleum,” Johnny Miller said on NBC.
But McDowell bucked the trend to become the first European to win the Open since Tony Jacklin in 1970. It was no small feat. McDowell accomplished what players such as Seve Ballesteros, Nick Faldo, Jose Maria Olazabal, Bernhard Langer, Colin Montgomerie, Sergio Garcia and Ian Woosnam could not.
There were even more qualified candidates from his country: Darren Clarke, Padraig Harrington and Rory McIlroy.
McDowell believed it was only a matter of time.
“Things are changing,” McDowell told reporters earlier this week. “We have more and more top players, guys who are capable of winning major championships.”
Seaside golf requires a special set of skills. When McDowell arrived at the University of Alabama-Birmingham, coach Alan Kaufman had to teach him how to hit the ball from the middle of his stance instead of the back, so McDowell was used to hitting the ball low — the way to negate the effects of ocean breezes.
McDowell, 30, learned his lessons well and applied them at Pebble.
“This golf course really has a links type feel to it,” McDowell said Saturday. “It’s a British Open-type golf course. Disregard the heavy rough around the greens. It has a British Open-type flavor. There’s a sea breeze, which has more of an effect on the golf ball than regular winds.”
On Sunday at Pebble Beach, those might have been the winds of change.
