Michael Hoey will always have Portugal.
Hoey won the Madeira Islands Open on Sunday for his second European Tour title, both of which have come on Portuguese soil. Two years ago, he won the Estoril Open de Portugal and then endured a dry spell until last week.
Playing steady golf without dropping many shots was the approach that guided Hoey to the winner's circle. He carded four bogeys on Thursday, but had no more than that number over the remaining three days combined.
Hoey shared the overnight lead with Jamie Elson on Saturday and went up on that rival by two strokes thanks to bogeys by Elson on the front nine. Hoey basically played par golf, with the only flashpoint coming at 13 when an errant drive suggested a dreary outcome. But he saw his way through that and collected at birdie at 14 with smooth sailing thereafter.
"It was just very, very tough," Hoey said, alluding to the wind in which Sunday's round was played. "I hit one in the rocks on 13 and I thought, that's it, I've thrown this thing away completely. But somehow I managed to make a good swing on the third shot and holed that for bogey. That was huge, kept me in it, then I birdied the next and parred my way in."
Hoey won by two strokes over Elson and Chris Gane. The winning score was 278 (72-68-67-71), which was10 strokes under par.
MCDOWELL MEETS MCILROY
So, Ian Poulter defeated Luke Donald in the finals of this 24-man event in Casares, Spain. But our focus was on the quarterfinal stare-down between Graeme McDowell and Rory McIlroy. Have you forgotten that only three months ago, McIlroy took an 8 and 7 shellacking from Ben Crane in Arizona? After all, there have been more high-profile disappointments that McIlroy has had to deal with in that aftermath.
No matter. McIlroy, having dusted himself off several times now this spring, started with a 1-up victory over Retief Goosen, before suffering a 3 and 2 loss to Nicolas Colsaerts. Since the format was not single elimination, he then found himself pitted against McDowell, who'd gotten past Louis Oosthuizen, 3 and 1, and Jhonnatan Vegas, 1 up.
McDowell opened a 2-hole lead after a birdie at the third hole. An eagle-3 at the fifth by McIlroy trimmed that advantage to a hole, but McDowell immediately got that back with a birdie at the par-3 sixth, followed by another at the eighth. A couple of 3-putt odysseys didn't help McIlroy any. And when he did hole out from 18 feet at the ninth hole, he gained no advantage as McDowell matched him from five feet.
McDowell squirted away to a 4-stroke lead with a birdie at 11. To that point, he'd not had a bogey (nor would he over the remainder of the round), while McIlroy had gone blemish-free since taking bogey at the first hole.
McIlroy mounted a rally with birdies at 13 and 14 to slice McDowell's edge to two holes, but when the defending U.S. Open champ holed out from the fringe on 16 for birdie, that was the match right there - 3 and 2, McDowell.
"I missed five chances from the middle of the round, which really cost me, and that was it," McIlroy said. "I just couldn't get a putt to go in."
Much was made of the friendship between the two Ulstermen, but they were all business during the match, not conceding short putts and keeping the chatter to a minimum.
"You really can't give anyone anything," McIlroy said. "I wasn't going to really engage in any conversation and that was the plan from the start. It looked like he had the same plan, as well."
"It's hard to get into the mood to play one of your best friends, and you have to leave your friendship on the sidelines, and try to beat each other," McDowell said. "He desperately wanted to win and so did I.
"It was a great game. It was quality. We really didn't give each other any holes. I've got bragging rights until next time, but Rory is going to be winning multiple golf tournaments for the next 10 years, 15 years, maybe more and I would like to go head to head against him Sunday afternoon in big events like this one."
That afternoon, McDowell, who seemed to have put last week's disaster at The Players' out of his psyche, was eliminated by Colsaerts, a 2 and 1 winner. So, for the second straight week, what looked warm and bright in the morning turned dismal later in the afternoon.
