OH BOY, is this different; or what? Where else, eh? Hugh Grant – the actor – getting cat whistles from female admirers behind the ropes; Keith Wood – the (ex) rugby hooker – grabbing, signing and throwing (crookedly) hats back to autograph seekers.
Where else? The rich, the famous, and – perhaps most importantly – the ordinary man, woman and child putting some pep back into their steps. Where else would you dare hope to find the world’s very top golfers giving something back? Where else, indeed, would you find every last cent going to charitable causes? Outside of a major or a World Golf Championship, this is a field which would have a tournament sponsor – anywhere – salivating.
Positively drooling, in fact. And, yet, this fifth edition of the JP McManus Invitational Pro-Am tournament at Adare Manor Hotel Golf Resort in Co Limerick – despite the difficult pin placements which had players wondering had they stumbled by accident into a major course set-up – retains a feel-good atmosphere that can imply the actual golf is secondary.
Graeme McDowell, golf’s newest major champion, was clapped and cheered on to every tee box, up every fairway and on to every green. When he finished out on the 18th, the tournament host JP McManus and his wife, Noreen, presented him with a glass memento to mark his triumph at Pebble Beach. The reaction from the crowds swarmed around the finishing hole suggested it was as much from them as the host. The gesture was heartfelt.
G-Mac’s whirlwind fortnight found another reason to send the head swirling as he sought to explain the crowd’s reaction to him. “Amazing. Incredible.” McDowell’s breakthrough US Open win has brought with it new demands and expectations. “I haven’t quite grabbed the whole concept of it but it is life-changing . . . once an hour I have a proper thought where I still can’t believe it, where I have a reality check.”
Yet, as the champion put it himself, this was the “ideal” place to return to competition. “There’s definitely an acclimatisation period I’ve got to go through dealing with this (US Open win). This was the perfect place to come, (to) get the response from the Irish crowd that I’ve had, which has been amazing, and straight over to Loch Lomond (for the Scottish Open). By the time Thursday comes around, I will have settled back down and got my business head screwed back on again,” said McDowell.
Of course, McDowell has good reason to take time to adjust. Apart from carting the US Open trophy around – “There’s been a few worrying moments, it’s been in a few bars and places in the small hours of the morning” – there has been the pile of congratulatory letters accumulating, including one from British Prime Minister David Cameron wondering if McDowell’s next challenge would be to help him break 100.
Not that you’d give Cameron much chance of breaking 100 around this Robert Trent Jones Snr-designed masterpiece. While the atmosphere yesterday – where a crowd in excess of 40,000 turned up with the resultant decision to postpone any further sales of entrance caps for today’s second round – was akin to that of a carnival, the course itself presented a severe test which saw only four players break par.
It was tough, with Justin Rose, teeing up after his win in the ATT National in Philadelphia on Sunday, shooting an 80. Paul McGinley built an ugly snowman – a quadruple bogey “8” on the 14th – while former US Masters champion Trevor Immelman also ran up an eight on the 18th which, in this shotgun start format, was also his first hole. Immelman failed to return a score, a fate which also befell Alvaro Quiros – another to register an eight, in his case on the second – as some of golf’s top players discovered there was a price to pay for their presence in the charity tournament.
With 11 of the top 15 players in the world in the field – it was originally due to be 12, but Lee Westwood was forced to pull out to undergo treatment on a leg injury ahead of next week’s British Open – the paucity of sub-par scores in the individual tournament highlighted how pins were tucked away to make scoring difficult while the swirling wind added to the challenge.
At day’s end, four players – including a couple of Americans – led the way. Only, it wasn’t the American everyone had expected to be involved. Tiger Woods, the world number one, joked and inter-acted with the crowd but laboured to a 79 in a round which featured only one birdie, at the 17th. The first round lead was shared by 52-year-old John Cook, who spends his time on the Champions Tour in the US, Peter Hanson, Jim Furyk and Rory Sabbatini who all shot one-under-par 71s.
