Golf: Mcdowell Knocks Out Clarke

The battle for bragging rights as Northern Ireland's best golfer, cunningly disguised as a first-round match at the Accenture World Match Play Championship, was settled for the time being yesterday when Graeme McDowell beat his boyhood hero Darren Clarke by one hole over a muddy La Costa course in southern California.

McDowell played the marginally better golf over 18 holes, as his victory on the last green would suggest, but the win over his countryman and colleague - the pair were born 25 miles apart and share the same management company - was as much down to his dogged spirit as it was to his iron shots and more accurate putting.

Prior to the match, McDowell, who is 11 years younger, had spoken fondly of his and Clarke's shared golfing history together at Royal Portrush ("Darren was inspirational to me when I was growing up"), while the older man was, as they say in America, all business. "You just have to put the blinkers on," Clarke said of his approach to playing against friends. He was not kidding.

Even in happy times Clarke has a heightened complexion, like a man with an urgent appointment whose bus is late. But for the duration of yesterday's match he carried the demeanour of a one-man thunder cloud, striding down the fairway 20 yards ahead of his opponent, cigar clamped in his mouth. Any words exchanged between the two were curt and strictly of the "good shot" variety.

McDowell, who is both less experienced than Clarke and blessed with a sunnier disposition, looked positively intimidated in such an atmosphere and it showed in his tentative play over the early holes. By the time he managed to pull himself together and birdie the 8th he was already two down. In fairness, Clarke hit some majestic drives on the front nine, as well as holing a couple of great putts on the 3rd and 5th holes.

But gradually, the match began to turn on the back nine. McDowell's birdie at the 14th, combined with his opponent's missed four-foot putt, reduced the younger man's deficit to just one hole. "That was the turning point," he said afterwards.

Clark missed another short putt on the 16th, which levelled things, and McDowell closed out the match with a birdie on the final green. "It means a lot to me," he said of the win. "I'm pretty pumped right now. I only felt on top of the match with three or four holes to go."

Joining McDowell in the second round will be Clarke's Ryder Cup colleague Lee Westwood, who thrashed the American left-hander Steve Flesch by a margin of 4&3 and will now face Davis Love. The chances are that both will form part of a strong European presence in the later stages of this event. In early play, several of the last year's Ryder Cup winners had advantages over their opponents, most notably Ian Poulter, who was three up on the American Jim Furyk and David Howell, who thumped Japan's Shigeki Maruyama 6&5.

While McDowell and Westwood were among the early winners they were not the earliest. That distinction belonged to the greenskeeping staff who once again performed the miraculous feat of turning a course partly submerged 24 hours earlier into a playable 18 holes. Only one hole - the par-five 9th -was unsaveable and it had to be played as a par three. "We decided this was the best thing to do. In a match-play competition it's one player against another and you have a bit more latitude than you do in stroke play," said the tournament's director Mark Russell.

Westwood, for one, was impressed. "I doubt we'd be playing if it was stroke play, but in this format it's the same for both players, so that's fine," he said, though his kind words did not extend to the six-inch rough lining the course. "It's like a salad bar down both sides of the fairway."