The breakout star of this Open Championship hasn’t hit a single shot

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — It was hard for Graeme McDowell to say no.

Not just because European Tour Productions was offering a paying job during an otherwise paycheck-free week in the golf calendar, but also because the job was as close to work-from-home as exists for a professional golfer.

McDowell grew up here. Like right here, in Portrush, same small seaside town that has welcomed a quarter-million fans from across Ireland and Northern Ireland for golf’s final major. The same Portrush — population: 6,150 — that can be walked from end to end in the course of a brisk morning stroll. The same Portrush with nearly as many golf courses (two) as main roads (three). McDowell’s roots in the town go back at least another generation, to his parents Kenny and Marian, who grew up in the “villages” off the main drag (if such things can exist in a seaside town so small). He played his childhood golf at Rathmore Golf Club, otherwise known as the course located less than a flipped wedge from the action at Royal Portrush.

There was also the matter of the work. Before qualifying, McDowell knew he would be in Portrush for the 153rd Open Championship whether he was in the field or not. When qualifying went south, the thought of another job for the week sounded quite intriguing. And when European Tour Productions called to offer a paying gig as a color analyst on the R&A’s “World Feed,” McDowell figured the upside was pretty good.

It’s possible that neither party knew just how well McDowell would fare in the broadcast booth for the week at the Open. The golfer was a broadcasting beginner when he signed up as a TV voice for the World Feed — an R&A-operated broadcast that is sent out to dozens of countries for reproduction on their networks. His career as a player included plenty of thoughtful commentary, but none that rose to the degree of mid-career ogling from TV executives that his LIV counterparts Phil Mickelson and Jon Rahm have each received.

But almost immediately once play began, fans watching at home in the United States on Peacock/NBC and abroad in the World Feed’s many English-speaking countries knew that McDowell was a fit. He offered careful, incisive analysis, he cracked jokes, and he brought a general air of enthusiasm to the proceedings that immediately made an impression upon those watching from a distance.

It helps that McDowell is intimately familiar with the environs. But it also helps that he’s actually good at this. And with McDowell, 45, in the later stages of his playing career, it’s hard not to view this week’s tryout as a glimpse into the life that might one day be.

He wouldn’t be the first golfer to try it out. Just last year, NBC’s Kevin Kisner popped into the booth for an extended tryout with the network. He waited until the offseason, when it seemed clear his PGA Tour status might lapse, to sign a deal with the network. At this tournament a year ago, in Troon, European Ryder Cup captain Luke Donald served as lead analyst for NBC’s telecast, evidently also testing the waters of a career on TV.

Television is a siren song for pro golfers nearing the end of their career and used to the rhythms of the pro golf calendar. It provides an opportunity to stay close to the sport that has defined their adult lives, and in some cases, like Nick Faldo and Johnny Miller, to extend their golfing celebrity well into the next generation.

McDowell, the 2010 U.S. Open champ, fits the billing of major championship pedigree. And at the Open Championship this week, his work has already named him one of Portrush’s biggest winners.