The Irish Sun
Mac to his best
Paul: I’ll kick on after finding form at K Club.
Revitalised Ryder Cup hero Paul McGinley reckons he can kick on now – and play the best golf of his career. The Dubliner limped into the K Club with his confidence hanging by a thread but emerged at the heart of the greatest sporting party in Irish history, determined to take on the world, Speaking at his spectacular course design at Macreddin Village, Wicklow, McGinley roared “I didn’t want the Ryder Cup to be the defining moment of my career. I said it four years ago and I say it again now. “I wan to move on from here. I have a lot more goals to achieve. I have a lot of hunger and a huge amount of desire.
“I have a lot of goals to achieve as a golfer. I’ll keep going. I’ll regroup, get back on the horse again and I’ll keep going, I’ve always done that in my career and I’ll do it again.”The €12million Macreddin Golf Club, which opens next year, McGinley’s first course design and the latest to fall under the PGA European Tour Courses umbrella.
But far from hinting he is thinking of moving away from the tour an into design, McGinley made it clear he is NOT a spent force as a golfer and will not be trading his spikes for a pair of Wellingtons any time soon.
He rapped: I don’t plan to go into design in a big way, yet. I still have four or five years at the very top of my career and I want to make the most of those. “It will be a while before I get my next project going. I want to get my identity out there and I will not take my eye off the ball in terms of what I want to achieve on the golf course.
“I have a huge amount of golf left in me – I am not even close to being washed up. “Once I have that desire I will be OK. The Ryder Cup has renewed me, but It is done and dusted now. It is a great memory but it is time to move on and go forward.”
McGinley is determined to leave a lasting legacy at Macreddin, just outside Aughrim, by lovingly designing a 7,173-yard parkland gem that rewards strategy over power as it winds its way through the Wicklow pines.
But while he is determined to put the Ryder Cup behind him and set about regaining his place in the world’s elite, he admits the cheers of the Irish fans at the K Club are still ringing in his ears.
Unsure if he could convert a glimmer of renewed confidence into a bonfire of desire and performance on the course, the crowd lifted him to such an extent that he could not face letting them down.
Sitting in the snug of Acton’s Country Pub, which forms part of the Macreddin Village complex, he explained “Pride covers everything.” “For your team-mates, for your family, your country, your captain, the European Tour. You want to do it for all those reasons.” “The crowd is still ringing in my ears. I was walking down the road in Sunningdale when I got back on Monday and I felt I wanted to wave to everybody. For five days at the K Club you were waving. The passion was absolutely amazing, with the shouts and the roars.
“When I walked off that practice ground down towards the first tee, they saw me from the stands and started shouting and, as you go around, it escalates. You feel the affection of the crowd and it’s a big thrill.
“Your legs don’t turn to jelly, that means you don’t like it. You try to channel it in and for the right things. When they start singing ‘Molly Malone’ and ‘You’ll never beat the Irish’ you say to yourself, ‘I don’t want to let any of these guys down’.
“ I got to first base and then I kicked on. I knew I was going to be playing with Padraig too, I was told by Woosie before the Ryder Cup.
“I knew I would play well with Padraig on my shoulder. I knew I had a game again too because I shot 66 on Sunningdale New the day before I left. I knew my game was coming around. I was ready to compete again and played three games – and I played well in three games.”
After slumping from 18th to 53rd in the world, McGinley does not want to let himself or his own expectations down now – and he has set himself some lofty goals between now and the end of the season.
First up is the Dunhill Links in the Scotland, followed by his defense of the Volvo Masters title and two weeks in Asia, where he will play the HSBC Championship Tournament and the Hong Kong Open.
From there it is on to Barbados to bid for the world Cup with Padraig Harrington at the luxurious Sandy Lane Resort before sitting down to reassess his goals for 2007. Those plans will not include too many visits to the US, where he played 11 times this season with some disastrous results.
He explained: “Maybe trying to play both tours took a lot more out of me than I thought. I played 11 events in the States this year and I won’t be playing that many again. I’ll play the majors and the AT&T and that’s about all I’ll play there.”
Mentally McGinley is as strong as ever and he revealed that if it had not been for his mental strength, his results would have been far worse. He added “My biggest regret is that I played as poorly this year as I have.
“I was missing the cut in the US Open and The Open by a shot but there was so much mental energy used by that and if it hadn’t been for that I would have missed the cut by eight of nine shots.
“The popular opinion was that I was struggling mentally, but it wasn’t a mental thing. Without that mental game I’d have been missing those cuts by 10 shots.” Like his European skipper Ian Woosnam, a man he describes as “ballsy” for a fourball strategy that saw him leave three of the world’s top 14 on the bench, McGinley is not short of guts. Now it is time for McGinley to move on and achieve a few objectives of his own.
The Irish Sun
30th September 2006
Brian Keogh
