OPEN FOR HOT ROUNDS
Mcilroy, Koepka among the best bets as year’s final major returns to Northern Ireland
Canada has already made an impact on the season’s final major championship.
The 148th British Open is set to begin Thursday at Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland, where it was last played in 1951. That last trip to Portrush is the only time the championship has been played outside of England and Scotland.
Until now.
There’s a good chance that a few extra Guinness were poured last month in the seaside town in County Antrim when Rory Mcilroy won the RBC Canadian Open, hours after Graeme Mcdowell punched his ticket to his hometown open with a 30-foot par putt on the final hole.
Mcilroy holds the course record at Royal Portrush, a 61 he shot as a 16-year-old that holds up to this day. That was nearly half a lifetime ago for the 30-year-old, who is the favourite to win next week at 8-1 odds.
Mcilroy has recently pointed to his play in Canada as some of the absolute best of his career and he has put plenty of thought into how to replicate the feeling he had in Hamilton, Ont.
Aside from the RBC Canadian Open, Mcilroy also won The Players Championship in March and going into the Scottish Open he had an incredible 11 Top 10s through 13 events.
The Northern Irish star was raised about an hour away from Portrush in Holywood.
Just behind him on betting boards is Mr. Major Brooks Koepka, who has placed no worse than second at any major championship this year. He won the PGA Championship at Bethpage Black and also won two majors last year. He enters the British Open as world No. 1.
Koepka is coming off a 65th-place finish at the 3M Open in Minnesota and a tie for 57th at the Travelers Championship outside of Hartford, Conn. Of course, that doesn’t matter since Koepka is golf’s big-game hunter with four career major wins versus a measly two regular tour victories. Plus, his caddy Ricky Elliott is a Portrush native, who told us at the PGA Championship he has played 1,000 rounds there.
It will be a surprise if neither of the betting favourites perform well. The same can’t be said for Tiger Woods, who will enter play at Royal Portrush as a man of mystery. We have not seen the 15-time major winner play since last month’s U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, where he finished tied for 21st. Since winning the Masters in April, Woods has only played three tournaments: The PGA Championship, The U.S. Open, and The Memorial.
It’s impossible to make an educated guess as to the state of his game, but he has performed his worst this year in cold, wet weather.
At the Genesis Open in February, it was rainy with temperatures in the low teens and Woods looked uncomfortable. Weeks later he said that was where the neck pain began that forced him to withdraw from the Arnold Palmer Invitational.
He has also never played Royal Portrush. Over his career he’s performed his best at courses he’s familiar with — think Augusta, Bay Hill, Torrey Pines, Firestone. Despite this, underestimating Woods is a dangerous game.
There are three Canadians in the field at Royal Portrush, which is a nice surprise considering five weeks ago, heading into the Canadian Open, there were none.
Adam Hadwin earned a spot in the field with his sixth-place finish in Hamilton, where three spots were up for grabs for non-exempt players finishing inside the Top 10. Hadwin has his game in its best shape of the season and will be coming off a fourth-place finish at the 3M Open.
Hadwin credits much of his recent strong play to an increased focus on his iron play, although his putting looked great last week in Minnesota. He is 63rd in the world rankings, has five Top 10s this season and has earned nearly $2 million.
Corey Conners made it into the field two weeks ago on the strength of his world ranking (84th). Conners made news the week before the Masters with his first PGA Tour win at the Valero Texas Open. Since that win in April, Conners’ best finish is a tie for 31st.
Austin Connelly, 22, made it through a qualifier at Prince’s Golf Club in Sandwich, England, last week and will be playing in his second British Open in three years. Connelly turned heads in 2017 at The Open at Royal Birkdale, where he entered Sunday in contention and tied for 17th. Connelly missed the cut this week at the John Deere Classic.
To say Northern Ireland is excited to have The Open return would be an understatement.
For decades, the dramatic dunescape, crumpled fairways, and impossibly beautiful vistas of Royal Portrush were not considered to host The Open. In the late 1960s, conflict between Protestants and Catholics turned to a low-level war known as The Troubles and violence — followed by the shadow of violence — kept the world away.
Things are not perfect in 2019 and there are still issues likely to be swept under the rug, but the return of golf’s biggest international championship has been met with unprecedented support.
“It’s the first time in a 148 years of The Open Championship that we are in a sold-out position and those tickets were sold out three months after they went on sale,” said R & A executive director of championships Johnnie Cole-hamilton.
Cole-hamilton was at Royal Portrush in May speaking about the upcoming British Open. He added that 74 per cent of tickets had been purchased from inside Northern Ireland or Ireland.
Portrush is something of a summer town with the beaches and golf drawing tourists to one of the northernmost points of the country.
“It is a small town,” said Canadian national women’s team coach Tristan Mullally, who spent years at the course as a senior assistant pro. “There are three beaches and they’re called the North, the West and the East strand, so you kind of get the picture of where that is. It really is on a spit of land. The harbour itself is literally the last point. On a nice day from Portrush you can actually see the tip of Scotland.”
A native of Ireland, Mullally worked at Royal Portrush from 1999 to 2005 and has played roughly 200 rounds at the course, once shooting a 64. During his time there he played frequently with Portrush native Mcdowell and the two developed a close friendship, eventually being best men at each other’s weddings.
Mullally said both Mcdowell and Mcilroy will have an advantage at Royal Portrush thanks to their intimate knowledge of the course, but added the top players in the world are so good that unless you bring your best game, it won’t matter. And being a local hero isn’t all roses.
“Sometimes being the hometown golfer and the extra media you have to go through, it can be a pretty taxing week and you try to balance that, but I think that’s why perhaps the Canadians in the past haven’t maybe done so well at their respective opens,” Mullally said.
“The eyes are really on you and if you play well you’re going to get more media attention. It’s a fine edge.”
In Mullally’s opinion, driving the ball well will be paramount at Royal Portrush. With fewer blind shots and fewer bunkers than many links courses, there will be an emphasis on getting your ball in the correct positions to have the correct angles into the difficult greens.
“A lot of golf courses, links golf courses in particular, they have mounds that are very naturally spaced out, but you’re hitting over them versus through them,” he said. “I think Portrush is unique in that way in that it doesn’t matter where you are, you generally see where you’re trying to go. I think that’s where — for good drivers of the ball — if you can see where you’re trying to go and you’re able to plot your way around, I think it plays to a real advantage there.”
Mullally explained that the course demands a lot from players because it’s multidirectional. A look at the course map shows that it does not simply go up and down and players will not be able to get comfortable knowing that they are playing the outward holes in one wind and the inward holes in the opposite.
“All of the holes tend to move in different directions, so you’re going to have to deal with every type of wind,” he said.
Add in the numerous doglegs at Royal Portrush and you can expect to see players standing on fairways (if they’re lucky) spinning their heads trying to figure out what’s going on.
One frustration that can be found in Linksland is that quality shots, at times, can end up in bad spots. That’s simply the rub of the green. But Mullally said more often than not — and more often than some other famed links courses — quality shots will be rewarded at Royal Portrush.
“I think this golf course is one of the fairest tests of links golf that there is out there,” he said.
After 68 years away from Royal Portrush, we’re about to find out.