Rory McIlroy: ‘I would love to win an Open at Portrush, absolutely'
Rory McIlroy
nothing will ever top the euphoria of Augusta National in April, victory at an
Open Championship
staged in Northern Ireland could at least come close.
McIlroy's return to Europe for the Scottish Open is notable in itself as his first playing appearance on this Continent since claiming the career Grand Slam, but next week and
Royal Portrush
looms large.
McIlroy has revelled in the appearance of his homeland in the positive sporting spotlight after decades dominated by the Troubles. 'I think it's a great representation of how far Northern Ireland has come in the last 30 or 40 years,' said McIlroy.
'In the 70s, the 80s and the 90s, no one would have dreamed of hosting an Open Championship in Northern Ireland. So it's a testament to the people of Northern Ireland for how far we as a country have come.
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'I think my generation couldn't care less about what had happened in the past. Everyone's just looking forward. My mum and dad both grew up in the 60s and the 70s and Northern Ireland was a very different place. I feel very fortunate that I'm of the generation that I am that I didn't have to deal with any of that, or very little of it.
'It has come a long, long way. People really appreciate when a huge sporting event that the world's eyes are on that week happens. Everyone there really appreciates that and excited to show the country in the best light possible.'
Rory McIlroy waves to the crowd as he leaves the 18th green during the second round of the Open Championship at Royal Portrush in July 2019. Photograph: Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images
McIlroy will have a particular score to settle when he returns to the Antrim coast. In 2019, during the Open's first Portrush staging since 1951, a disastrous first round contributed towards him missing the cut. McIlroy rallied in round two with the backing of vociferous support but fell short. The 36-year-old will know there will not be many more Portrush Open opportunities for him.
'If venues matter to you, it maybe puts a little bit more pressure on you,' McIlroy explained. 'I would love to win an Open at Portrush, absolutely. I would love to win an Open at St Andrews. I would love to win a US Open at Pebble Beach. There are venues in the game that just mean a little bit more. Having Portrush from home and the experience I had there last time ... the Friday was amazing, the Thursday, not too much.
'It's a little like when [Novak] Djokovic won the Olympics last year: he knew that was going to be his final chance, and you saw the emotion and you saw how much it meant to him. You think about it, and you can't pretend that it's not there. But when you are on the course, you just have to go out there and play as if you're not playing at home and just play as if it's another tournament. It obviously is a little more emphasis. There's something extra there, just like there is at an Open at St Andrews or a US Open at Pebble Beach, for example.'
First, Scotland. A stellar field at the Renaissance also includes the world number one Scottie Scheffler. Eight of the world's top 10 will tee up in East Lothian. McIlroy clearly relishes his trips back from his adopted home of Florida.
'The one thing I would say about the last couple of weeks is I felt like I could detach a little bit more and sort of hide,' McIlroy said. 'Sometimes you need that to completely get away. I feel like this world of golf can become all encompassing if you let it.
'There's a detachment from the sort of week-in, week-out grind when you get back over here, when you play PGA Tour golf for that sort of first 25, 30 weeks of the year. It's been lovely to get back and see some familiar faces.' – Guardian
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Irish Times
22 minutes ago
- Irish Times
Golf stars return to Portrush for Open, but it's a different set-up to 1951's £300 prize and pick of parking spaces
I would pay good money to see how my late granny, a former Portrush bed and breakfast landlady, would react to the idea of paying up to £50,000 (€58,000) to stay for a week in her beloved Co Antrim seaside town. When the Open first casually rolled into Portrush in 1951, many of the top players found lodgings in boarding houses around the town. More than seven decades later the difference in the price of accommodation, prize money, spectator numbers and media coverage is inconceivable. In 1951, the total purse amounted to £1,700 (€1,970) with the winner receiving £300 (€350). Royal Portrush Golf club proudly announced the installation of 16 new telephones for the use of the press covering the event and the post office installed a mobile facility so that, over the three days of the tournament, the 7,000 spectators could send postcards from the course. They say home favourite, 1947 Open champion Fred Daly, slung his clubs over his shoulder and strolled each day from the family home on Causeway Street the short distance to the first tee on the Dunluce course. READ MORE As a 16-year-old, my father Maurice, now 89, gladly accepted a lift with a commercial traveller who was a guest in his mother's B&B in one of the few cars to be seen in the town in the early 1950s. They drove nonchalantly straight through the entrance gates and had their pick of parking spaces. Many years later, he confessed that on another day he and his friends sneaked in under the ropes without a ticket between them. Anne Marie and her father Maurice McAleese at Royal Portrush This year, as in 2019 when the Open last came to Portrush, we are taking no chances, and, much to his amusement, our tickets have been secured via the QR code on the app on my phone. I suspect that he also thinks that, as one of the few people who will have been to all three Opens held in Portrush, he shouldn't really need a ticket at all. In his debut professional tournament that summer of 1951 in Portrush, the late, great Peter Alliss recalled dancing at Barry's ballroom and swaying, not only to the music, but to the gentle swells of the Atlantic Ocean, merely a hop, skip and a twirl away. In 1951, Portrush was a bustling, fashionable holiday destination, which could already boast a long and successful relationship with the game of golf. More than five decades earlier, on a summer's evening in 1899, unsuspecting visitors to the popular resort would have noticed the centre of the town was unusually busy. Hundreds of people had gathered around the railway station to give a rapturous welcome to a teenage golfing sensation. As 17-year-old May Hezlett and her mother made their way towards the jubilant crowds, the sky above the resort's West Strand beach dazzled in a blaze of colour and the air was filled with the loud, crackling sound of fireworks, a celebration befitting the champion golfer that young Hezlett had, unassailably, just become. In back-to-back triumphs, she won the British Ladies Open Championship just two weeks after winning the Irish Ladies Open Championship. Both prestigious tournaments were played at the links course at Royal County Down. 'Miss May', as she was known, was the most accomplished of the four talented golfing Hezlett sisters. She was introduced to the game at the age of nine by her mother, also a skilled exponent of the relatively new sport. At just 11 years of age, she won her first competition using only a cleek, mashie and putter. Hezlett became the inaugural president of Royal Portrush Ladies in 1922, having been lady captain in 1905. She remained president until the Open was held for the first time at Royal Portrush in 1951. A portrait of her by artist Harry Douglas, commissioned by the club to celebrate her success, still hangs in the Portrush Ladies clubhouse. Seventeen-year-old May Hezlett caused a sensation in Portrush in 1899 when she arrived just won the British Ladies Open Championship and the Irish Ladies Open Championship back to back She died in the winter of 1978 at the age of 95. Little could she have known when she arrived on the platform of Portrush train station eight decades earlier that she would go on to carve her name in the annals of golfing history. As the Open returns for the third time to Royal Portrush, it's entirely fitting that the club recently unveiled an Ulster History Circle Blue Plaque in her honour, cementing her illustrious place in the history of the women's game. And how she would have relished the oldest and most prestigious golf tournament in the world returning to the scene of so many of her victories. She watched the Open when it was first played in Royal Portrush 74 years ago and, no doubt, in 2025 as in 2019, her spirit will be felt keenly by Royal Portrush Ladies watching proudly as the world's best golfers try to tame this mighty links. More than a century ago, behind many great golfing men, there was at least one even greater golfing woman. And so, it will be with a great sense of pride that I, along with my father, the three-time Portrush Open champion spectator, will find a place near the first tee on the first day of the 153rd Open on Thursday to cheer on the finest 21st century exponents of the game. As in 2019, there will be a collective hope among locals that a home-grown hero might just do it again. That smiling Shane Lowry, who has his own mural in Portrush now, might regain the claret jug and thrill the crowds as he did so magnificently six years ago on that rain-sodden Sunday when nothing could dampen his sprits or conquer his sheer talent. Rory McIlroy at The Renaissance Club in North Berwick this week during a pro-am before the Scottish Open. Photograph: Christian Petersen/Getty Or could it be written in the stars that his great friend Rory McIlroy will see his name carved in silver for a second time and banish the ghosts of the missed cut in 2019 ? Darren Clarke is also sure of a euphoric reception as he strides down Hughie's 420-yard first fairway. Always popular with the crowd, he became the oldest Open champion since 1967 when he won by three shots at Royal St George's at the age of 42 in 2011. Darren Clarke, who is from Co Tyrone, won the Open in 2011. Photograph: Phil Inglis/Getty Absent from the field will be pride of the parish Graeme McDowell. With a total of 11 tournament victories on the European Tour, and four on the PGA Tour, including one Major championship, the 2010 US Open at Pebble Beach, the affection in which he is held in his hometown is undiminished . These days there's nothing casual about how the Open arrives at any venue. Preparations begin months in advance, the attendant infrastructure is vast and the impact on and off the course is felt long before and after the event. No matter the outcome, no matter the weather, for golfers and non-golfers, the fervent hope is that Open will once again triumph and for at least four days in July all amateurs will feel a bit triumphant as a result. Just don't take any chances on a car parking space. Anne Marie McAleese is a former BBC Radio Ulster presenter of Your Place And Mine and a keen golfer
Irish Times
22 minutes ago
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Calamity Corner: Open players will want to steer clear of 16th's ‘card wrecker' chasm
'Of all the hazards, fear is the worst' – Bobby Jones. For most of us mere mortals, the sight from the tee to the green on the 16th hole of the Dunluce links at Royal Portrush is both mesmerising and fear invoking. Calamity Corner, as it is known, is unquestionably one of golf's great par 3s, with a deep chasm to the right and a tiny bailout landing area short left of the green. Off the championship tee which, obviously, will be in play for the 153rd Open in the next week, it is a monster of a hole. It is also the highest point on the course, and one of the most exposed. Back in his amateur days of playing in the North of Ireland championship, Pádraig Harrington recalls using a driver for one tee shot into a strong wind. READ MORE While a driver is unlikely to be in hand for any of these modern-day professionals in their quest to claim the Claret Jug , the task for one and all – of finding the green – will, in itself, be a challenge and especially so given that it comes so late in the round where the ability to rescue a card is lessened. Calamity overlooks the Valley course to the right, where part of that links has been turned into a driving range during The Open, and, hands up, the majority of times that I've played (to use the word loosely) the hole, my time has invariably involved negotiating a way down the sheer drop in search of a ball that has been attracted into the chasm as if by some magnetic force. Mountain goat terrain, for sure. Keith Mitchell on the 16th hole during a practice round before the 2019 Open at Royal Portrush. Photograph: Mike Ehrmann/Getty Such a fate will surely befall some poor soul at some stage during the week ahead, when the fourth and final Major of the season returns to the Co Antrim links for a third staging, and its reputation as a 'card wrecker,' as Royal Portrush's club professional Gary McNeill describes it, is one that will prey on the minds of some more than others. When the 148th Open returned to Royal Portrush in 2019, only 41 per cent of the field – through the four rounds of the championship – managed to find the green with their tee shots on 16. That statistic ranked as the lowest of any green found in regulation. The 16thranked as the third-toughest hole on the course, behind the 11th and 14th holes. In the run-up to the championship, former champion Henrik Stenson, on first playing the hole in practice, later quipped: 'Sixteen is that short, drivable par-4, isn't it?' For sure, it is not one that anyone forgets. 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That small plot is, to this day, known as 'Locke's Hollow'. Back then, Calamity was actually the 14th and only became the 16th after Martin Ebert of Mackenzie & Ebert golf course architects – who work closely with the R&A on links which form the Open rota – was brought in ahead of the 2019 championship to make course changes which saw the old 17th and 18th holes removed and two new holes, what became the seventh and eighth, created in the dunes of the Valley course, in such a way that it would seem they were always part of Dunluce itself. 'The general feeling was that the course changes led to an improvement of the Dunluce Links. Subsequently, the members and visitors seem to have accepted the changes as having had a positive impact. The immediate sight of the seventh, stretching away in the distance when you turn the corner of the road leading to Portrush, is one of the most exciting views in golf and one that leads to a huge sense of anticipation of what is to come if you are playing the Dunluce,' remarked Ebert of the additions. Calamity, though, was untouched because it didn't need to be. It remains as it was when Harry Colt created his masterpiece, his vision for the par 3 for the tee shot to be played across the chasm with all the peril involved. Calamity Corner – at 236 yards – is not the longest par 3 on the Open rota. The 16th at Carnoustie comes in at 248 yards. The 17th at Royal Troon at 242 yards. Unlike those two, however, it is that chasm – which Colt used so tellingly all those years ago – that, visually, makes it so different. And, for all its difficulty, and the notoriety that the 16th hole has gained, the examination will be a tough one but a fair one with, as ever, the wind a factor too. As Darren Clarke, who knows the Dunluce Links as well as any other man, put it, 'the thing about Royal Portrush, it's a fair golf course. If you play well around Portrush you should have the opportunity to score well. If you're missing too many shots you're not going to get around Portrush, and that's the way it is. That's why it's a Harry Colt masterpiece.'
Irish Times
10 hours ago
- Irish Times
Jannik Sinner dismantles ailing Novak Djokovic to set up Wimbledon final against Carlos Alcaraz
When Novak Djokovic strode on to Centre Court for a second contest with Jannik Sinner in barely over a month, the narrative had long been set. This was surely one of the 24-time grand slam champion's last chances for a potential major victory, a challenge that will only become more difficult as he ages even further away from his physical peak while Sinner and Carlos Alcaraz move closer to their own. For the ensuing two hours on court, Sinner made it clear just how punishing that challenge already is as he completely dismantled a weakened Djokovic, the sixth seed, with his nuclear weight of shot and unimpeachable defence as he reached the Wimbledon final for the first time in his career with a dominant 6-3, 6-3, 6-4 win. A month after suffering the most devastating loss of his career, holding triple championship point against Alcaraz in the French Open final before losing in five crushing sets, Sinner has shown off his mental fortitude and resilience by picking himself back up and immediately making his way through to yet another final. Sinner, the world No 1, will have a chance to avenge that defeat at the earliest possible moment as he faces Alcaraz once again after the Spaniard defeated Taylor Fritz 6-4, 5-7, 6-3, 7-6 (6). As their combined grip on men's tennis continues to strengthen, Alcaraz and Sinner will be the second pair of players in the open era to contest the men's finals at the French Open and Wimbledon in back to back years, which Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer achieved for three consecutive years between 2006 and 2008. Sinner also extends his run of dominance over Djokovic to five straight wins and he has not lost to the 24-time grand slam champion since 2023. READ MORE He is the sixth player in the open era to reach four consecutive men's singles grand slam finals, joining a distinguished list of all-time greats: Roger Federer, Novak Djokovic, Rafael Nadal, Andre Agassi and Rod Laver. Every new grand slam tournament underlines his desperation to become a legend of the game in his own right. Jannik Sinner and Novak Djokovic shake hands after their semi-final on Friday. Photograph:Before the match, Djokovic said he felt confident about his tennis level after their tight three set match in the French Open semi-finals. At 38 years old, his physical preparedness for a best of five set battle with the No 1 was less certain. While Sinner's bandaged elbow looked in great shape after his freakish fourth round match against Grigor Dimitrov, Djokovic had skipped practice on Thursday after suffering a heavy fall on match point in his quarter-final win against Flavio Cobolli. It was Sinner who burst into the match performing at a supreme level from the beginning and at 1-1, he put together a brilliant return game to break Djokovic's serve. Sinner looked impenetrable throughout the first hour, covering every inch of the worn grass with his perfectly timed open stance slide, able to eviscerate the ball and force himself on to attack from either ground stroke and any part of the court. He served spectacularly, too, completely shutting Djokovic out of his service game. Between his unparalleled weight of shot off both wings, robbing time away from his opponents, and the difficulty of consistently putting the ball past him, the effect of Sinner's game on his opponents is total suffocation. From his slow start, Djokovic's hopes further cascaded. As he futilely attempted to wrestle control of the exchanges, he found himself overhitting in a futile attempt to take back control of the baseline. In stark contrast to Sinner's spectacular court coverage, Djokovic's movement was laboured in the corners and his facial expressions ranged between misery and frustration. By 0-3 in set two, his serve completely under attack, Djokovic began to serve and volley on practically every other point. Although he pieced together three more holds, the Serb completely ceding the baseline only served to further illustrate his woes. Down two sets in barely over an hour, Djokovic received a medical timeout for his left leg and inner thigh. Carlos Alcaraz celebrates a point against Taylor Fritz in their Wimbledon semi-final. Photograph:At the start of the new set, the momentum briefly shifted as Sinner completely lost control of his forehand and cheaply handed over his service game. Djokovic, the master at seizing momentum, immediately took control and established a 3-0 lead but it did not last. As Sinner found his range and Djokovic's physical struggles became increasingly apparent, the Italian powered through six of the final seven games to close out an emphatic win. In the earlier semi-final, defending champion Alcaraz handled the might and spite of Taylor Fritz's serve, as well as temperatures that climbed to 31 degrees, to reach his third Wimbledon final in a row. The serve was dominant, the points short, the margins slim, and Alcaraz had just enough as he came through a mini-classic 6-4, 5-7, 6-3, 7-6 (6). 'It was a really difficult match,' the two-time Wimbledon champion said. 'Even tougher with the conditions. It was really hot again. With the pressure of a semi-final it was not easy. I was just really proud how I stayed calm, thinking clearly.' The Spaniard is now through to his sixth grand slam final, an impressive feat, especially given he turned 22 in May. And the bad news for his opponent in the final? Alcaraz has won the previous five.
