Struggling Ryder Cup hero Paul McGinley needs to break his K Club jinx in the Smurfit European Open tomorrow.

The Dubliner has missed the cut for the past two seasons at the course where he is the touring professional.

And he is determined to convince himself that he is not in a slump by avoiding a hat trick of failures.

He claimed: "I haven't been in a rut and it's not a big deal. I've putted well for four fifths of the season and it is only in the last month I have gone a bit quiet.

"It comes and goes and it will always come back. In my opinion I haven't had a rough year. I've won over 200 grand and I'm 47th in the Order of Merit."

But despite his protests the reality is that McGinley IS in the middle of the biggest slump of his career.

Last year at the K Club he was worried about his freefall to 48th in the world rankings.

Now he has fallen 101 places to 149th and is struggling to regain his confidence after losing his swing completely in the middle of last season.

In fact, the 36-year-old Dubliner has had little to smile about since he sank the winning putt in the Ryder Cup at the Belfry last September.

He missed ten cuts around the world in 2002 and finished 58th in the Volvo Order of Merit, his lowest ranking since his tour debut in 1992.

This season he has been more consistent and mixed two top tens with three missed three cuts in 12 events.

But it's a huge contrast to his banner season of 2001 when he finished eighth in the money list having made the cut in 24 of the 25 events he played.

The rot set in during the late spring last year and apart from the Ryder Cup, little has gone right for the likeable Grange man since then.

Having decided to part company with coach Peter Cowen he returned to his old mentor Bob Torrance to correct the faults that have cost him a place in the big money events he got to play in as a member of the world's top 50.

He said: "I've been working with Bob on getting my club in a better position at the top of the backswing. I have to get it a bit more laid off and square - I'm a bit off the line.

"I've made great progress on it and great progress with Bob over the past six months. But you can't play well unless you have a good short game and my short game hasn't been good enough."

McGinley showed signs of a return to his old form with a 30th place finish in the Open de France last week.

But he admits that his fragile short game is only just beginning to come back to the levels of 18 months ago.

He explained: "In France my short game was very sharp and that was nice to see. But I didn't play as well tee to green. It's a confidence game with the short game. As anybody who plays the game will tell you, your confidence comes and goes and I wasn't holing the putts. When you are not holing putts you are not confident.

"I have a lot of top 20s, a few top fives and I ad a great chance to win in Qatar and played well on the last day but the two guys ahead of me played well too and that was the difference.

"I'm certainly not at the level of poor play as I was last year. Last year I was lost technically. I concentrated too much on the wrong things and went too far down the wrong road on one particular way of swinging the club.

"I had to go back to redress the situation. Okay, my results say that it's not back. I'm at 75 percent and my form is not as I would like it to be. But it's not bad either."

But for McGinley, the K Club is not the place to hope for a return to form.

He confessed: "No, the K Club is not a place that has been kind to me in the past. I'm due a good week here. But I think it's horses for courses.

"The guys who win around here are normally big hitters. Michael Campbell, Darren Clarke and Lee Westwood have won around here because they can smash the ball.

"It's not really a course that suits my game, especially the way it's playing at the moment. It's quite lush and wet so it's going to play a little bit longer than normal and this is one of the biggest courses we have out on the tour.

"I'm certainly a lot longer than I have been in the last few years but it will be interesting to see how the course performs with new technology."

The Dubliner will begin the long road back when he tees it up with big-hitting youngsters Paul Casey and Trevor Immelman in the first round tomorrow.
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© Brian Keogh 2003

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