Carnoustie, Scotland …
Former US Open champion’s Graeme McDowell’s return to the European Tour was focused more on Hurricane Matthew and fears for his Florida-based family.
No sooner had McDowell posted a two over par 74 in bright but windy conditions on day one of the Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland and he was on the phone to his wife in Orlando, Florida.
The Kennedy Space Center and the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station located just east of Orlando are braced for the onslaught of Hurricane Matthew.
Hurricane Matthew is one of the most powerful storms to threaten Florida’s Space Coast since the dawn of the space ago some 50-years ago, and with the U.S. National Hurricane Center predicting heavy rain, dangerous storm surges and winds gusting up to 140 mph along Florida’s east coast.
Hurricane Matthew bearing down on the Florida coast to the east of Orlando.
The eye of Hurricane is expected to pass just off shore or directly over Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center.
Little wonder McDowell was more worried about his wife and two children, including the youngest born just over a month ago.
“I’m arranging to get my wife and children out of Orlando with what I hear about the Hurricane, but then I don’t know where to,” he said.
“From what I am reading and hearing, it sounds all pretty scary and that’s my priority at present.”
What was not a priority was McDowell’s opening round that included three birdies but also three bogeys and a ninth hole double bogey at Carnoustie, and in an event he finished runner-up in a play-off in 2004.
“I three-putted my sixth to go two under and then three-putted the next and then took ‘6’ from over the back of my ninth which was the 18th of the course where I knuckled my approach shot out-of-bounds,” he said.
“It was just one of those days really as it could have been a couple under and not a couple over.
“But then it’s been quite a while, and not since The Open this year, I have this type of golf and another factor is that we have not seen this easterly wind at this tournament for years.
“So in thinking I know this golf course very, very well it played totally different today.”
