Graeme McDowell, with that Irish sense of humor, wandered up to tournament director Greg McLaughlin Saturday night at the Sherwood Country Club as asked if it could be okay if he a minimum of Attempted to beat Tiger Woods within the final round of the Chevron Globe Challenge. After all, Tiger WAS going to win this one, wasn't he? Tiger Woods WAS going to cruise with that four-shot lead he designed for 3 days, wasn't he? Surely, even this revamped, work-in-progress version of Tiger Woods could hold on to a four-shot lead, couldn't he? An unusual thing occurred on the way to the re-anointing of the former world's No. 1 player on that dramatic Sunday at Sherwood.
Padraig harrington got Graeme McDowelled. How dare that plucky small lad from Northern Ireland? The nerve of him. Not a way Tiger Woods could blow a four-shot lead on a golf course that is created for him to feast up with those five par-five holes. Not a way Tiger could lose with adoring caddy Steve Williams publicly declaring that "The tide has turned" for his employer. An individual forgot to inform that bold little party crasher, McDowell, this is Tiger's shindig. It is his stomping ground, the course where he's won this little 18-man invite four times and seemingly completed second whenever he does not win. Sadly for Woods, whenever you appear up "ultimate grinder" within the golf dictionary, his name continues to be replaced by McDowell's, who demonstrated that at the U.S. Open. It has been a dream season for McDowell and it was a surreal finish on Sunday that ripped the flamboyant Tiger Trophy from Woods' grasp.
In the end, McDowell was folding, wasn't he? He had run Woods down, thanks in part to some of those gaffes which have annoyed Woods this season. But there was McDowell hitting his tee shot in the par three 17th into grass so high that one might lose a little child in it. The laughing lad from Ireland created one heck of the bogey and surely that might doom him and surely Woods would fittingly get that elusive win on this last day of his golf season, 2010 version. Surely, Woods would win when he hit that vintage Woods eight-iron within three feet at the 72nd hole.
No way McDowell will be brash enough to hole that 25-foot birdie putt and force Woods to bear the agony of a playoff. To make matters worse, he'd do it again on the first playoff hole. Drained an additional 20-footer for birdie, he did. The scheduled Woods march to victory had grow to be just another head-scratching moment for the world's No. 2, who need to now ponder what is coming up next. Will some other cocky European pick his pocket when victory looks so specific next year? Oh possibly it was the setting, the Sherwood property in which the vintage "Robin Hood" movie with Errol Flynn within the lead role as legendary outlaw who robbed in the rich.
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