A day after an almost calamitous start to the OHL Classic at Mayakoba, Graeme McDowell on Friday found himself in an unexpected position, the halfway leader after the second round at the PGA Tour event in Mexico.
The Northern Irishman rediscovered his long game and caught fire with his putter to reel off nine birdies in an eight-under-par 63 at the El Camaleon Golf Club in Playa del Carmen.
“I drove the ball much, much better today than yesterday and putted just as good, really seeing these greens well, putting decisively and making a few,” McDowell told PGATour.com after posting a 12-under 130 total, one stroke better than the US’ Derek Fathauer (66) and South Korea’s Kim Si-woo (64).
McDowell, the 2010 US Open champion, almost checked out of the tournament before he had barely started.
He sprayed his drive out of bounds at the first hole on Thursday, reloaded and then almost met the same fate with his second drive (his third shot).
Had the second drive been out-of-bounds too, he would have been forced to play again from the tee, but the ball stopped narrowly in play and he salvaged what in the end was a good double-bogey.
“I hit my second ball further right than I hit my first,” said the 36-year-old Northern Irishman, who is known in the golf world as G-Mac. “I figured I could be going home very, very soon. Thankfully my second ball kicked in bounds.”
McDowell is having a mediocre year by his own standards and his world ranking has dropped to 85th, but he believes he is trending in the right direction.
“This is a result of three or four months of grinding,” he said of his lofty position. “I’ve been working hard on my swing.”
“It’s been a frustrating year, but that’s the game of golf we know and love, and you’ve got to take the rough with the smooth and keep trying,” he added.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
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