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McDowell to tee it up with Woods

GOLF: THE INTERNATIONAL Federation of PGA Tours has decided to salute golf’s new world order by sending out the game’s top 21…

BRIAN KEOGH in Miami
Wed Mar 09 2011 - 00:00

GOLF:THE INTERNATIONAL Federation of PGA Tours has decided to salute golf's new world order by sending out the game's top 21 players in threesomes based on their world ranking for the first two rounds of the WGC-Cadillac Championship.

That means World number four Graeme McDowell will tee it up with number five Tiger Woods and sixth-ranked Phil Mickelson in a made for TV three-ball at Doral’s forbidding TPC Blue Monster.

World number one Martin Kaymer, therefore, will go out with number two Lee Westwood and number three Luke Donald as he enjoys his second week at the top of the rankings, bidding to at least match his idol Bernhard Langer, who was world number one for just three weeks in 1986.

Kaymer took over from Westwood at the top last week when he reached the final of the WGC-Accenture Matchplay in Tucson. The Englishman could have taken back the number one ranking in the Honda Classic but failed to get the top-three finish he needed.

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The 26-year-old German knows Westwood must finish at least fourth this week to have any chance of preventing him from matching Langer’s reign. But he insists he’s just happy that he has already achieved one of his career goals. “It would be nice to be one day longer as number one than Bernhard Langer,” Kaymer said. “But if it happens it happens and if not that’s fine too; I really don’t care. I’ve been number one and no one can ever take it away from me. That was my goal when I started playing golf.”

Kaymer took last week off and revealed a special family moment with his brother and his father Horst, who flew over to his Arizona base for just 24 hours, simply to congratulate his son in person.

“He just wanted to congratulate me for being number one in the world,” Kaymer revealed. “He said, ‘Next time you are back in Germany, who knows if you’re still number one, so I just wanted to take the opportunity to say congratulations’.”

World number eight Rory McIlroy will go out with seventh-ranked Paul Casey and world number nine Paul Casey with Pádraig Harrington drawn with Anthony Kim and Camilo Villegas.