Graeme McDowell hoping to pick up where he left off at Saudi International

The recalibration has taken slightly longer than anticipated, but Graeme McDowell – back, not so much on home turf, but rather desert terrain that yielded his last tour win and so making for a happy hunting ground – is hopeful his defence of the Saudi International tournament at Royal Greens Golf & Country Club in King Abdullah Economic City will finally kick-start his season.

Of late, McDowell’s form doesn’t make for pleasant reading. Missed cut after missed cut, with one withdrawal, in his last four tournaments dating back to the tailend of 2020. His last weekend to play? That would be a tied-59th finish at the RSM Classic back in November. His last top-10? Retrace a full year, to when he actually won the Saudi International.

“When you come to a place with good memories, it’s easy to visualise yourself being successful around a place when you’ve played well, and I think that’s one of the big things missing for me right now is that little bit of confidence and belief in my ability to make enough birdies to score well to compete. So, I’d love to try and find something this week,” admitted McDowell who has fallen to 91st in the world rankings, pertinent given the upcoming World Golf Championships and indeed the Masters in April.

New coach

In short, he needs to step up a gear; and requires upward trending in the world rankings.

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Part of the fix-it project has been to work with a new coach, Lucas Wald, back in the United States. "It's one part technical and it's one part kind of mental. The mental side of it can't come without good technique . . . even though I used to look at my swing 10 years ago and not really like it, I did a lot of things incredibly well. So, we're trying to understand those and get back to swinging the club the way I used to a little bit more.

“Then, you need to build some confidence on top of that technique. You can’t think your way into shooting scores if the technique is not there. So you’ve got to have a reliable, trustworthy kind of ball flight, and then layer on some birdies and some confidence on top of that and that’s how you recreate the recipe back to start competing and start winning tournaments again. I’m in that little bit of rebuild process but I’m starting to see some good things happen.”

Strong field

McDowell – grouped with Paul Casey, winner of the Dubai Desert Classic and Robert MacIntyre for the first two rounds – has been impressed with the continued improvement of the course, with some run offs around the greens improved since his win last year.

“I think the course is potentially the best one of the three we’ve played [in the Middle East Swing], so I think that’s a testament to what they are trying to do here and create such a strong tournament with a strong field,” he said, adding of his game heading in: “I think it’s definitely been more of a cold putter the last couple of weeks than anything else. I actually feel like my long game is trending in the right direction, definitely just need to get the putter heated up a little bit. I’ve got some good memories last year making some putts, so hopefully we can get that going again.”