A Sports Post for the Ladies

Your winner for the 2010 U.S. Open is not only a doppelgänger for Dr. McDreamy on the ABC show I refuse to watch; he’s got a pleasant Irish accent to go with his Hollywood looks.  On a week when no professional player could break par on the treacherous Pebble Beach U.S. Open course, Graeme McDowell was even par for the four-day event… enough to earn him a major championship.

Apropos, his father was there on the 18th to greet the new champion.  Whether they celebrate Father’s Day in Northern Ireland or not is anybody’s guess.  What I do know is that when the improbable winner was interviewed by NBC’s Bob Costas, he mentioned that there might be some “pints of Guinness going down” in pubs in his native Ireland, where it was 2:30 a.m.

McDowell is first European to win the U.S. Open since Tony Jacklin in 1970, and he fended off some of the scariest predators in the game, Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson, Ernie Els and one of the golf’s most promising young talents, Dustin Johnson (or Dustin Hoffman as the announce team’s Johnny Miller mis-appropriated).

It should be no surprise that a guy from Ireland won on a course that made golf gods seem mortal.  Ireland’s courses (Carnoustie Golf Links,  St. Andrews) are renowned for impassible conditions and their unforgiving nature for mis-placed shots.

It would have been a good story if Tiger made his comeback on the course where he won by a record 15 strokes, or if Phil Michelson, who shot a 66 during the week, broke through for his first U.S. Open title, but this story is just as compelling.  I’m happy for the good-natured Irishman… he plays the same Callaway X-Forged irons I do, and he’s a spokesman for Ballantine’s 35-year-old Scotch Whiskey.  So he’s really just like me, except for more handsome and charming, a better golfer, and now, a hell of a lot richer.  Still, kudos to the Patrick Dempsey look-alike.  His efforts were literally “par for the course.”