LIV Golf Decision 'Kept Me Awake At Night' - Graeme McDowell

Graeme McDowell has opened up on how difficult a decision it was to join LIV Golf and the disappointment he would feel if he got to the end of his career in the game without captaining a Ryder Cup team.

Following his chats with media last week on the Asian Tour, where he said he had "accepted" his Ryder Cup days may be over, the 2010 US Open champion appeared on the 5 Clubs podcast with Gary Williams (opens in new tab) to discuss his move to LIV and his future in the USA vs Europe biennial match.

In the in-depth interview, McDowell admitted that his Ryder Cup chances are "greatly reduced", while explaining how deciding to join LIV and potentially say goodbye to the Ryder Cup and a possible future TV broadcast deal "were the things that kept me awake at night."

He even began to get teary when imagining himself as captain at Adare Manor in 2027, a role he was well in the running for prior to joining the Saudi-backed circuit.

"Would I love to be the Ryder Cup captain in Ireland in '27? I picture myself standing there on the stage giving the opening speech looking at my team behind me. I mean, beautiful. You know, I've got a tear in my eye just thinking about it. But that wasn't a guarantee, it wasn't a given," McDowell told Gary Williams.

"I was potentially gonna be against Westwood and Justin Rose for that Ryder Cup. Say LIV hadn't come along, [Westwood] would have turned Rome down so now he was looking at '27 because Poulter was gonna take '25 at Bethpage Black.

"He said that eight years ago and wanted to get into a fight with Mickelson on the stage in New York City. I mean I haven't really thought about it, that may be one of the most fundamental things that may come out of this thing that we don't get to see Phil versus Poulter in Bethpage Black. You know, that probably won't happen now.

"Westwood is one of the most decorated European Tour players of all time. So I'm going against him and I'm thinking, 'I'm not sure I'm necessarily winning this job' you know so this is the type of reasoning that I had to go through in my head.

"These two or three things we're talking about were the things that kept me awake at night as to whether I thought I was making the right decision or not. Are my chances greatly reduced now of ever being a part of a Ryder Cup team in any level? Yeah, of course they're greatly reduced."

G-Mac, a four-time Ryder Cup competitor and famously the winning point scorer at Celtic Manor in 2010, revealed how he would feel if he were to never captain Europe, and also said he wasn't ready to retire just yet after the prospect of a potential broadcasting role came up.

"It was a difficult one, and if I'm old and grey and 75-years-old and I look back and I never had the shot, I never captained a European team I will be incredibly disappointed," he said.

"I balanced all these things up, I weighed all these things up. It was a complex equation and at the end of the day, I had to look through the short term lens. I had TV deals kind of knocking on my door, I wasn't ready for that. I wasn't ready to hang the clubs up and I had to have that conversation.

"Contrary to what anyone thinks, I'm not showing up at 14 LIV events this year, taking my pay check and going home. I still believe that I'm good enough, I still believe that I can win golf tournaments. I still believe that I can compete at any level. And that's the competitor inside of me."

Watch the full podcast: