Paul McGinley has tapped his innate feistiness to exceed expectations
By RON GREEN JR.
Rich Lerner knows the cue. The red light is on and Brandel Chamblee is in the midst of a verbal dissertation on Golf Channel’s popular “Live From” show during the game’s biggest events when Paul McGinley, sitting to the left of Chamblee, locks eyes with Lerner.
It’s a subtle movement, even just a head nod, that says McGinley wants to tag himself in.
Given Chamblee’s conviction and combativeness, it is not a moment for the meek.
McGinley is many things but meek is not one of them.
“If Paulie has a counterpoint, he’ll look at me with a little smile like ‘Richie I’m coming,’” said Lerner, the anchor/moderator of “Live From.”
Occupying a seat alongside Chamblee and Lerner at major championships has afforded McGinley access to American audiences, who have embraced him. What has separated McGinley and made the 58-year-old Irishman one of the most popular and respected voices in the game is, quite simply, what he says.
It is painted with his Irish brogue and underpinned by a perspective grounded in Gaelic football and forged by a storybook golf life, one that began with McGinley flying eight time zones to convince the golf coach of a small private college he was good enough to play. More unlikely still, he would play in three Ryder Cups, securing the winning point in one of them and captaining the winning European side in a fourth.
Although that captaincy was 11 years ago at Gleneagles in Scotland, McGinley’s enduring influence is such that, between television gigs, he is the strategic advisor to captain Luke Donald’s 2025 European team at Bethpage Black, an oracle of sorts.
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