Donald enjoying home comforts

Golf:Their volunteer shift at Medinah Country Club was over, and Bill Arbogast and John Mudrock were camped out by the seventh green, putting together their lists of the two Ryder Cup teams and trying to match the Europeans with their nationalities.

All went smoothly until they arrived at the name of Luke Donald."Isn't he American?" Mudrock asked his friend. Donald, as they eventually were able to confirm, is English, but the confusion - particularly this week in the Chicago suburbs - is understandable.

Of the 24 Ryder Cup players, the only man truly playing at home is Donald. He attended Northwestern University just north of Chicago, where he played for the Wildcats on a golf scholarship. He later married a fellow student and has now lived in the area for 15 years.

"Hopefully I can garner a little bit of the support of the crowd because of that and turn that into a slight advantage for Team Europe," Donald said yesterday before heading onto the course for a practice round.

This one was in the company of Rory McIlroy, Graeme McDowell and Sergio Garcia, who was exchanging hugs and high-fives with Donald and may well be paired with him on occasion when the Cup begins tomorrow. But there was also plenty of company outside the ropes, and many of those wearing Chicago Bears sweatshirts and Medinah caps seemed to be on a first-name basis with Donald.

"Luuuuuuke" came the cheers as he rolled in a practice putt. "Wildcats!" came the shouts that were intended to serve as lures as he ran the gantlet of autograph seekers on the roped-off pathways between greens and tees."He's a good guy; we've kind of adopted him as our hometown golfer, truly," said Frank Kastelic, a 42-year-old insurance executive from the Chicago suburb of Winnetka.

Kastelic's support carries more weight because he went to the University of Chicago, one of Northwestern's academic rivals. "I'll forgive him," Kastelic said. "I don't think a lot of people actually know he's from England. Obviously people that pay attention and know the history and follow the tour know he's from England, but I think a lot of people would think he's American because he's kind of assimilated."

But Donald, who was born and raised near London, said - hardly for the first time- that he did not feel any divide in his allegiances."I always consider myself British through and through," he said. "I've obviously reaped the benefits of going

through the college system over here. It really helped me with my golf, and I enjoy living here, and I feel very comfortable here.

“But I don't think that changes how you feel about where you grew up. And I grew up my first 19 years in England and still have a very close relationship with that country, with my country."

Playing for Europe certainly brings out the best in Donald's precise and elegant game. Ranked third in the world behind McIlroy and Tiger Woods, the 34-year-old remains one of the best players never to win a major championship. But he is 3 for 3 in the team competition that still matters most in golf.

His overall record is a bright and shiny 8-2 with one half. He has never had a losing record in any Cup, and it is perhaps no coincidence that the only Cup the Europeans have lost in the 2000s was one that Donald missed: at Valhalla in 2010.

Now Donald gets to play his fourth Cup on the same tree-lined course where he finished in a tie for third at the 2006 PGA Championship. He said he did not, despite his short commute, have any reservoirs of local knowledge to dip into for his teammates. Medinah is not Donald's home course. He is a member at Conway Farms in the northern suburb of Lake Forest, which is near his home in the village of Northfield.

"I don't play here consistently when I am home," he said. ``I play once or twice a year. I obviously played the PGA here in 2006, and I played here a couple times in the last few weeks, just to get a feel for the golf course.

"But I think the golf course is pretty much in front of you. There's not too many tricks to it. It's about looking at the greens and figuring out where to put the ball in the right positions, because the greens are fast and slopey. And I think that's the key to this golf course if you want to make a lot of birdies is just putting it in the right place."

Putting drives in precisely the right place may not be as critical as usual on this brutishly long course. Davis Love III, the US captain, has trimmed back the rough dramatically, which should allow bigger hitters than Donald to pull the drivers out of their bags with less trepidation.

Watching Donald manage the risks and rewards will be intriguing, just as it will be intriguing to see how the Chicago crowd reacts if Donald is paired against Woods, Phil Mickelson or one of the other major US stars in Sunday's singles.

"I don't think they'll be rooting against him," said Jeff Mory, who is the director of golf at Conway Farms and knows Donald well. "They may be rooting for both players to play well. But if it's Phil or Tiger or whatever, it's going to be interesting because there are a lot of people around here who really think it's cool that he lives here."

Mory played a major role in that process. He was the coach at Northwestern who recruited Donald, although he was late to the table. Donald had hoped to attend Stanford University on a scholarship. That did not materialize, but Stanford's coach at the time, Wally Goodwin, had formerly coached at Northwestern.

"It was Wally who reached out to me," Mory said. "We were recruiting other kids, late in the process, and things were drying up on our end. I was at a tournament in California with Wally, and he asked me how it was going. And I said, 'It's not going that great.' And he said, 'You should take a look at this guy Luke Donald.' It was a good day."

Mory left to work at Conway Farms before Donald matriculated. Mory's assistant Pat Goss took over the Wildcats program and remains Donald's coach to this day. Donald went on to win the NCAA title in 1999 and earned his undergraduate degree from Northwestern in art theory. Asked what he might have done with that degree if he had not become one of the world's leading golfers, Donald cracked a smile.

"I think I'd be probably living in a different suburb than I am now, let's put it that way," he said. – New York Times Service