McDowell Here to Compete, Not Reminisce

Graeme McDowell is nine years removed from his U.S. Open victory at Pebble Beach, and he has recently thought about his golf “mortality,” having fallen out of the top 100 in the Official World Golf Ranking in July 2017. “I started to realize I love being out here. And the vision of it going away, if I continued to play that way, it was going to go away quite soon,” said the 39-year-old Northern Irishman. “I took my eye off the ball it felt like for a second, and a hundred 25-year-old kids came running by me. It’s a tough game. You have to keep working hard, and I feel like I’ve done a good job refocusing myself.” McDowell’s efforts have paid off with a victory in the Corales Puntacana Resort and Club Championship in late March, and a tie for eighth in last week’s RBC Canadian Open. “I think four or five months ago, if you’d have told me you’re on the first tee with Dustin Johnson and Phil Mickelson this week at the U.S. Open, I would have been very intimidated. Confidence is one of these very fragile things; it certainly goes away a lot quicker than it comes back.” McDowell is gaining confidence, and spots in the OWGR: from No. 259 in March to No. 101 this week.