This week sees the Back 9 continue with a return to Royal County Down in Northern Ireland. The revered links venue has hosted three previous Irish Opens but only one since the 1972 inception of the DP World Tour, nine years ago in 2015 when Søren Kjeldsen prevailed in a play-off.
World Number Three Rory McIlroy leads a strong field, which includes fellow past champion and Olympic Games team-mate Shane Lowry, with a host of local stars teeing it up on home soil.
Royal County Down, considered one of the best golf courses in the world, will host a DP World Tour event for the first time since 2015. This will mark just the fourth time that the Newcastle, Northern Ireland layout will host the Irish Open, doing so in 1928, 1935 and 2015. It also has hosted several notable amateur championships, including the 2007 Walker Cup, which featured several future major winners and PGA Tour standouts, including McIlroy, Dustin Johnson and Webb Simpson.
Royal County Down checks in at No. 1 on Golf Digest’s most recent World’s 100 Greatest Golf Courses list. It’s also first on Golfweek’s Best International Courses for 2024 and sixth on Golf.com’s Top 100 Courses in the World for 2023-24.
Joining McIlroy in this week’s field are Shane Lowry, Bob MacIntyre, Nicolai Hojgaard and Tom McKibbin, the 21-year-old who grew up on the same course as McIlroy, Holywood Golf Club outside of Belfast.
If the appetiser was anything to judge by, with search parties required to find errant balls during the windswept pro-am, where gorse bushes acted like magnets, the main course itself will likely provide one of the most severe examinations of the season on the DP World Tour for those seeking to add the Amgen Irish Open title to their career Curriculum Vitae with the aesthetic beauty of the course offset by its difficulty.
“Look, this is just a tough golf course. It’s a tough test and it will take a lot of good golf, a lot of patience, and a lot of holing a lot of putts for pars, and it will take a lot of good stuff, to do well this week. It’s not going to be about your good shots. It’s going to be about your bad shots and making sure they are not too bad and don’t get you in too much trouble,” claimed Shane Lowry of the expectations of those 156-players set to sit the examination.
For sure, this is not like a regular week on tour, of firing at flags à la target golf. Here, on this majestic links beneath the towering presence of Slieve Donard, players and their caddies will be required to decipher the mysteries of several elements, factoring in the northwesterly wind on a links which, despite the rain of recent weeks, is playing fast and firm as if conniving with dark forces to test the patience of one and all.
As the flagpoles rattled and the fabric of those same flags blew relentlessly during the pro-am in setting the scene for the task ahead, there was, also, an indication of the stardust cast on this event by Rory McIlroy. He may be one of 11 Irish players competing, but the world number three – who hosted the tournament on its last visit in 2015, when he missed the cut – was like a pied-piper in attracting a gallery of mainly young fans.
“Hopefully I can give them something to aspire towards in the future if golf is what they want to do,” said McIlroy, who spent a considerable amount of time signing autographs, while admitting that it came with some pressures.
As McIlroy put it, “It’s a bit of a double-edged sword. I get the buzz but I also feel the added pressure of trying to perform at home. It’s something I’ve honestly struggled with in the past. You know, the couple Irish Opens that I’ve played in Northern Ireland, the one Open Championship I played, hasn’t went so well. I usually just try to relax and go about my business as I would at any other time of the year ... and to manage my own little world around me to try to get the best out of myself as well.”
This time, McIlroy comes into the tournament after one of his busiest seasons. This is his 22nd event of the season and, by year’s end, he will have reached 27 when the DP World Tour Championship brings a close in Dubai. The plan is to reduce the playing schedule back to 22 or so next year.
And in looking back on his year to date, which yielded three wins but many close calls and another year without a Major, McIlroy identified the US Open and the Olympics as “missed opportunities.”
“At the top level of all sport, whether it’s football or golf or rugby, the margins are so, so fine, and this year, I’ve just been on the wrong side of those margins. Next year, I’m hopefully going to be on the right side,” he said.
McIlroy, for one, is excited to be back at a course considered one of the best in the world. Golf Digest has it ranked number one. “If you look at this golf course, you can hit numerous different clubs off tees. You can hit numerous different clubs around the greens in terms of bump-and-runs or chips or landing it on the green, not landing it on the green.
“I think the best golf courses I’ve sort of decided are the ones that provide you as many options as possible. I think there’s a lot of golf courses that we play on tour I don’t think really do that. I think you have to play quite a one-dimensional game. To have a golf course like this that provides so many options is a real treat,” said McIlroy.
Lowry, meanwhile, took in a pre-tournament visit to Royal Portrush – where Séamus Power joined him – on Monday as part of his own preparation, while Pádraig Harrington numbered Portmarnock and The European Club as part of his getting back to links golf and the different creativity required of players, each of them seeking to unlock the code to a win.
“I don’t know if you enjoy it any more but you embrace the challenge a little more, and you learn some tricks that work for you, don’t work for you. You get used to playing with four layers on ... it’s a different challenge and different mindset,” admitted Power of readjusting to links golf.
In the expected weather conditions, of consistently strong winds and predicted frequent rain bursts, patience will be a requisite. Whoever manages to stay out of the most trouble, you feel, will be the last man standing.
Philip Reid is Golf Correspondent of The Irish Times
On to this week we go as the DP World Tour heads to Royal County Down for the Irish Open, retaining its position in the schedule ahead of next week’s flagship event at Wentworth.
Matt Wallace’s win last week showed that Ryder Cup qualification is on the minds of those players who aren’t assured a place on Luke Donald’s team next autumn, and we have more hopefuls in the field this week in Northern Ireland who’ll no doubt be looking for some early points in the year-long race to make it to Bethpage Black.
Barring some kind of disaster, this week’s favourite Rory McIlroy shouldn’t be worrying himself with any such issues, but he’ll no doubt be keen to resurrect a season that’s somewhat petered out of late. 11/2 is the best price on offer about the Northern Irishman at the time of writing, with Ireland’s Shane Lowry and England’s Aaron Rai available at 10/1 and 14/1 respectively below him in the betting.
