McDOWELL MOANS ABOUT BUNKERS WITH WATER IN THEM

 FROM THE DAILY TELEGRAPH WEBSITE

By Matt Scott

Graeme McDowell carded a one-under-par 69 to put him among the chasing pack going into the weekend at Royal Lytham and St Annes, playing some lovely golf along the way and most of it with a broad smile on his face.

There was certainly no sign of the explosion to come when he left the course.

“The golf course is on the edge of unplayable,” he said. “In other parts of the world, if this was a normal tournament some of those bunkers would be GUR’d [whereby players are given a free drop to get out].

"I saw one in particular left of the 16th green, if you hit it in there, there’s nowhere to drop and there’s a foot of water. That’s not golf.

“It’s not fair. A few of these bunkers that are question marks need to be taken out of play. Hopefully they can get them dried out overnight.
A LITTLE DODGY

“The golf course has remained unbelievably dry considering how much rain we’ve had. The bunkers are a little dodgy in some places, unfortunately.”

The Northern Irishman has a point and it is one others have made. The bunkers have been dug so deep, Geoff Ogilvy seemed to suggest, that they have tapped in to the water table and been topped up by the rain that has fallen persistently over the past two days.

“It’s been as straightforward as we can imagine this golf course to play,” said McDowell. “In practice we were just thinking how many over par is going to win this tournament, and all of a sudden 10 under par is leading it through two rounds.”

Staying out of the bunkers helps and, broadly speaking, McDowell managed that on Friday.
But his round was not without incident, and when he did find the trap at the par-five 11th he could not play his third shot to the green due to the depth and waterlogging in the bunker; ultimately it led to a bogey that clearly still rankles.
MODEL OF CONSISTENCY 
Otherwise McDowell, who is in a rich vein of form having been runner-up at the US Open last month, a tournament he won in 2010, was a model of consistency and even the 69 he carded did not do his round justice.
His iron shot from the tee on the par-three ninth hole was particularly deft, landing three feet from the pin for a birdie. At the 12th, another short hole, his tee shot spun back to within three feet of the hole for another birdie, and he frequently made his eight- to 12-foot putts to make his pars.

Now, after an Open record that contains three cuts and no top-10 finishes, the 32 year-old is starting to believe he can transform his fortunes in golf’s oldest major. “There’s no one on the leaderboard that scares me,” he said. “The only person that scares me is myself.

“I’ve got to go out and control my emotions for a couple of days, I’ve got to go out and do my job for a couple of days and hopefully hopefully I’ll come down this last fairway on Sunday with a chance to win the Claret Jug.”
WESTWOOD NO CHANCE
A man who, by his own admission, has no such chance is Lee Westwood. Although he hit a respectable 70, the former world No 1 could not recover any of the lost ground from his three-over-par 73 on the opening day.
So Westwood’s chance of becoming the first Englishman to win this tournament on English soil since Tony Jacklin’s black-and-white triumph way back in 1969 has, by his own admission, gone for at least two years.
“I would say anybody level par or better has got a sniff,” he said. “Shoot 65 tomorrow and the two [leaders] shoot level themselves, you’re four or five down, with a windy day coming [on Sunday].”
Westwood is himself three strokes back from where he assesses he would need to be to win it. He will be 40 before he has the chance to win the Claret Jug again, and although his great mate Darren Clarke won his first Open last year at 42, this is not an ageless game as the defending champion proved by packing his bags last night