McDowell's triumph provides major lift for Europe

GRAEME McDOWELL made it look so easy at Pebble Beach it is hard to comprehend that European golf had to wait 40 years for a US Open winner.

Tony Jacklin's triumph at Hazeltine in 1970 was not the watershed moment people thought it might have been.

Not even the golden era of European golf in the 80s and early 90s – when Nick Faldo, Seve Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam and Sandy Lyle were in their pomp – yielded a winner of the American national championship across 'the pond'.

They went close, Faldo losing a play-off to Curtis Strange in 1988 and Colin Montgomerie finishing runner-up an agonising three times.

But until the early hours of yesterday morning, the US Open had not been a happy hunting ground for European golfers.

That was before Ulsterman McDowell showed us what winning a tournament traditionally revered as the toughest of the four major championships is all about – namely playing par golf.

As those around him lost their heads – his playing partner and third-round leader Dustin Johnson most dramatically with six dropped shots in the first four holes en route to a calamitous 82 – McDowell kept his as he safely negotiated his way around the treacherous and stringent Pebble Beach links with his sensible shot selection.

US Open courses, with their high rough, tight fairways and glass-top greens are not to be attacked, but respected, particularly one as penal as Pebble Beach when the aforementioned characteristics are enhanced by the Pacific ocean which gobbled up more than its fair share of balls over the four days as players struggled to control the high bounce on a sun-scorched links.

McDowell's sensible approach was summed up by how he played the 72nd hole, usually the place where a player unaccustomed to the heat of the back nine on the Sunday of a major would melt.

But with Frenchman Gregory Havret – who was the last of the players who could deny McDowell after the challenge of Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and Ernie Els, who have 20 majors between them, faded – failing to make birdie, the 30-year-old did not allow the adrenaline to get the better of his emotions.

"I had an opportunity to go for 18 in two, but made the decision not to do that when Gregory didn't make four and it was a nice easy five in the end, which was, thankfully, no drama," said McDowell, a five-time winner on the European Tour, whose previous best in a major was 10th at last year's US PGA.

"I'm just very proud of the way I handled myself this week, and I just can't believe I have major champion after my name from now on. It's a special feeling."

That 60-year-old Tom Watson – the 1982 US Open champion at Pebble Beach – finished only 11 shots behind McDowell playing the same methodical way as he did at Turnberry last year, further illustrates what is required of a golfer to win on America's toughest courses.

"To win at Pebble Beach, to join the names – Jack Nicklaus, Tom Watson, Tom Kite, Tiger Woods...me," said a disbelieving McDowell.

"I'm not quite sure if I belong in that list, but, hey, I'm there now and it's a pretty amazing feeling.

"But I'd take a major championship anywhere on the planet, I didn't really care."

It is a sentiment echoed by a host of European, and particularly British, players who have been threatening a major win for some time, but have yet to take the final step.

Lee Westwood, Justin Rose, Ross Fisher, Paul Casey and Ian Poulter have led the English challenge, but it was another Irishman, Padraig Harrington, who ended Europe's eight-year wait for a major winner with victory at Carnoustie in 2007.

How liberating that belated triumph can be for a golfer was proven as Harrington added two more majors in the next 13 months. McDowell certainly has the temperament and the game to emulate his compatriot.

Add Rory McIlroy to the mix and you have a trio of golfers from the Emerald Isle who could fly the flag for European golf on their own.

Not that an ever-expanding tour is having problems in that area, with 14 of the 42 majors played this century being won by European Tour products – from McDowell to Harrington, Michael Campbell to Angel Cabrera.

In a Ryder Cup year, when Montgomerie's men look to wrest back the trophy from the United States, such portents are encouraging.

European golf provides eight of the world's top 20 at present, with six of those coming from Great Britain. We just need more major winners.

McDowell, the young man from Portrush, has shown the way with his mature, coming-of-age performance at Pebble Beach.

Hopefully it will not be another 40-year wait for a US Open winner from these shores.