At a glance
■ The Open Championship
■ Royal Portrush Golf Club, Dunluce Course
■ Tonight (NZ time) to Monday morning
■ New Zealand’s Ryan Fox tees off 11.32pm tonight, 7.30pm tomorrow
■ Sky Sport 1 screens round one from 5.30pm today.
golf courses in the world.
It’s also a way to show the world that Northern Ireland is moving on from its past.
‘‘We want people to think of Northern Ireland and immediately then think of golf,’’ Peter Robinson, the then-deputy first minister of Northern Ireland, said when the tournament was announced five years ago.
‘‘Those are the positives from a Northern Ireland point of view.’’
The golf, at least at Royal Portrush, could be as spectacular as the views. This is a British Open with a little of everything for golf fans, from Tiger Woods trying for another major to McIlroy, McDowell or even the 50-year-old Clarke winning on home soil.
Quite a change from 1951 when an Englishman named Max Faulkner, who spent one winter milking cows to strengthen his golfing hands, won an Open that only two Americans bothered to enter. But one thing that hasn’t changed all that much is a golf course as pleasing to see as it is to play.
‘‘The thing about Royal Portrush, it’s a fair golf course,’’ Clarke said.
‘‘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.’’
Still, to a newcomer there seems to be an increased police presence outside the course than there has been at other Opens. There are signs posted that warn plainclothes officers are around, too, should anyone contemplate anything nefarious.
But to Clarke things seem far different from when he was growing up playing rugby and football nearby. The course he played most in Dungannon, he said, was probably the most bombed clubhouse in Northern Ireland for a time.
‘‘I had friends and relatives who were murdered, all sorts of bits and pieces,’’ Clark told the Daily Mail last week. ‘‘It just happened.’’
AP