PORTRUSH, NORTHERN IRELAND – APRIL 22: The Claret Jug sits on the 5th hole during media day for the … More
The 153rd Open Championship tees off Thursday on the dune and medieval ruin strewn Dunluce Links at Royal Portrush. It marks the third time the stunning, coast-hugging Northern Irish course has hosted the prestigious event that caps off the men’s major golf season.
When golf’s greatest players gathered here in 1951, it marked the first time the sport’s oldest major was staged outside of England or Scotland. That week, Englishman Max Faulkner captured the only major title of his career, prevailing by two strokes. Decades later, in 2019, Irishman Shane Lowry—buoyed by a dazzling third-round 63—won his first major in runaway fashion on these same dunes, igniting a raucous celebration across the island. Now, as The Open returns to Royal Portrush, Lowry is back in the field, still chasing major No. 2. The jovial 38-year-old native son is in fine form of late, third on tour in strokes gained on approach shots. This season, Lowry has a pair of runner-up finishes, two other top ten performances and he currently sits 17th in the PGA Tour’s FedEx Cup standings.
Lowry visited two weeks ago, with the grandstands already up, to reacclimate himself with the lay of the land and get in a major hunt frame of mind and then played nine holes on Sunday and the other nine Monday to jog major memories and rekindle course knowledge in preparation to make a valiant attempt at repeating history.
“I’m looking forward to the week but obviously I know that no matter what I did then, it doesn’t give me any God-given right to do anything special this week. I just need to get my head down on Thursday morning and get after it and see what happens,” Lowry said during his presser yesterday.
Homecoming
Shane’s close buddy Rory McIlroy will also have plenty of support fueling his bid for a second Open Championship title. The man with the career Grand Slam is no stranger to penning history at Royal Portrush, though his highlight reel here includes both heroics and heartbreak.
Back in 2005, he carded a brilliant 11-under par 61 at the North of Ireland Amateur Open, bettering the course record by three shots. But in 2019, when The Open returned to Royal Portrush, Rory couldn’t find his rhythm and ended up missing the cut.
Though he had already logged several professional starts on home soil by then, McIlroy reflected in his pre-tournament press conference that being under the microscope, playing in front of legions of well-wishers in Northern Ireland may have played a role in throwing him off kilter.
“I just think that that feeling, the walk to the first tee and then that ovation, I was still a little surprised and a little taken aback, like geez, these people really want me to win,” he said.
“I think that brought its own sort of pressure and more internally from myself and not really wanting to let people down. I guess it’s just something I didn’t mentally prepare for,” McIlroy added.
Nowadays, Rory seems much more at peace with managing the expectations that come with carrying his nation’s hopes and dreams upon his back. Besides, he’s arriving to the tourney with a tailwind, fresh off a runner-up showing at last week’s Scottish Open.
“It’s been an amazing year. The fact that I’m here at Portrush with the green jacket, having completed that lifelong dream, I want to do my best this week to enjoy everything that comes my way and enjoy the reaction of the fans and enjoy being in front of them and playing in front of them,” Rory said yesterday. “But at the same time, I want to win this golf tournament, and I feel like I’m very capable of doing that.”
Other favorites in the field include the usual suspects: world No. 1 Scottie Scheffler, LIV standouts Jon Rahm and Bryson DeChambeau, defending champ Xander Schauffele, and rising Swedish star Ludvig Åberg. Austria’s Sepp Straka and Scotland’s Robert MacIntyre also come in riding a run of impressive results. While they aren’t counted among the top echelon of favorites, both golfers have shown flashes of fine form that suggest they could make some noise if their game cooperates.
A bit of a wild card pick would be Collin Morikawa, who recorded just one top ten result in his last 10 starts. The two-time major winner has been playing caddie roulette of late, with a few different loopers on his bag for recent events. He has currently enlisted veteran Billy Foster on a temporary basis. Foster spent six years working with Matt Fitzpatrick and his career has also included long stints with Seve Ballesteros and Lee Westwood. Could this be the week Morikawa’s putts rekindle their magic and start rolling truer?
The field is raring to go in what promises to be a wide-open battle for the Claret Jug as major season culminates on the windswept links of Royal Portrush.
