Open returns, but only after ‘The Troubles’ subside
Darren Clarke was a teenager working at a bar in his hometown of Dungannon when the call came in.
The message was simple: Get out or get killed.
It was a few days before Christmas in 1986 and Northern Ireland was at war with itself — and by proxy, the government in London. “The Troubles,” as they are euphemistically known here, were raging and no one knew who the next target would be.
Clarke and his fellow workers took heed and got out.
“The bomb scare at 8:30, everybody out, bomb went off at 9:00,” Clarke said, “and the place was flattened.”
Clarke recalled the close escape this week amid preparations for a home British Open he thought he would never see. The Open is back in Northern Ireland for the first time in 68 years, and Clarke will step up to the first tee early Thursday morning and hit the first shot.
As with anyone who grew up around here during the time, though, The Troubles are never far from his mind.
“That was life in Northern Ireland. Bombs were going off quite frequently,” Clarke said. “And a lot of people, unfortunately, paid a heavy penalty for being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The Troubles that killed more than 3,700 people have largely ended, thanks to the Good Friday peace agreement in 1998. Still, tensions between unionists, mostly Protestant, and Roman Catholic supporters of a united Ireland still simmer beneath the surface and there are occasional incidents like the shooting death earlier this year of journalist Lyra McKee during rioting in Londonderry.
But with prodding from Clarke — the 2011 Open champion — and some others, the R&A felt comfortable enough to bring the tournament back to Royal Portrush, where it was last held in 1951 — the only time it had ever been played in Northern Ireland.
And with more than 200,000 fans expected to flood the course before play ends Sunday, the focus for both them and Clarke is now on golf.