Tee times and pairings have been announced for first two rounds at The Open

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Rory McIlroy has been grouped with Ryder Cup team-mate Tommy Fleetwood and former world No 1 Justin Thomas for the first two rounds of The 153rd Open at Royal Portrush.

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Okay, but first a Royal Port Rush where the tea times and pairings for the first two rounds of the open have just been announced. Jamie Weir can guide us through the all important details alongside Paul McGinney. Good afternoon to you both. Good afternoon to you Vicki from Roport Rush. Yes, we do have those all important tea times for round one and two. We’re not going to take you through all 52 tea times. We’re going to focus on four of the most eye-catching ones. And here they are. And I suppose Paul, the one that everybody’s looking to see is where Rory Mroy is teeing off. And he is teeing off in the afternoon on Thursday. 10 3 Rory’s uh tea time in the afternoon. There he is alongside Justin Thomas and Tommy Fleetwood. We’ll just run through all the ones that you can see there. Xander Sha playing alongside the US Open champion JJ Spawn and John Ram at 9:58 in the morning. Uh just 11 minutes after them, you’ve got Shane Larry, champion last time here, of course, against the 2021 champion golf of the year, Colorawa, and the world number one, Scotty Sheffller. And then in the afternoon, you can see just before Rory, Justin Thomas, and Tommy Fleetwood, you got Bob McIntyre, runner up at Oakmont a few weeks ago, Bryson Shambo, and last year’s open runner up, Justin Rose. But Paul, let’s start by talking about Rory. Six years ago, he was off in the morning. We know what happened on this first te. Is it better for him that he’s off in the afternoon? Does it mean that he can sort of see how the morning starters are getting on and calm his nerves a bit more? I I don’t know. There’s two ways of looking at it, Jamie. One one is that you watch the early morning play, get some ideas in the pin positions, how the course is playing, you develop your strategy around that. Uh the other body of thought would be that uh no, you want to get out early and you want to get it on with and get into the tournament straight away. So, he’s well first. He’s well experienced at this stage. It’s not a big biggie h one way or the other. But the thing you always look for when it comes to these links golf courses is the weather is so changeable and you can get the wrong side of the draw. Nobody knows yet who what’s right and what’s wrong or if there’s going to be any change in terms of good side or bad side. Uh but at the moment the weather looks steady. It’s pretty brisk uh 15 mph wind, no more than that with the odd shower coming in over the four days, but pretty mild. So we’ve got a pretty stable forecast. H certainly is Northern Ireland and Irish weather though. Trying to say trying to predict the weather in this part of the world is a fool’s errand that that one. Um we’ve got Scotty Sheffller out in the morning playing alongside Shane. Now Shane was telling me yesterday how, you know, six years ago he felt as if all the eyeballs were in Rory and he was able to come in under the radar. He’s not under the radar now. People are expecting, you know, he doesn’t consider himself the defending champion, but he is the defending champion on this course. Yeah, he is. And and uh, you know, he’s having a good a good season over on the PGA Tour. Uh, his arm players really good. It’s for me it’s a big arm play golf course this you got to you got to hit your irons very well, which he did obviously when he won. Big correlation between the guys who uh who who played well in 2019 and obviously Shane was at top of that pile. uh between them and the many greens in regulation they hit. So uh that plays to his strength is a golf course he’s very popular in. He spent the last two or three weeks going around Ireland playing links golf courses. He’s prepared. He’s ready. And Shane loves playing alongside the big boys as well, doesn’t he? Playing alongside Colorau and Scotty Sheffler. He’ll love that. Absolutely. Particularly Scotty. You know, you’re you’re out with the the best player in the game. And uh you know as great as Rory has been this year, it has to be said that you know Scotty the domination that Scotty has had has statistically on the PGA Tour in the last three or four years is nothing that we have seen since um since Tiger Woods at his best and we know how high that bar is. And we know that Rory can go but in terms of sheer consistency and monotony of performance, Scotty Sheffler is the guy. Yeah, absolutely. Before Shane Morawa and Scotty Sheffler, we’ve got Xander Schaeing off off alongside John Ram and JJ Spawn. I mean, this is new territory for JJ Spawn having a sort of high high-profile tea time like that. Xander Schoff, we know that he isn’t quite where he was 12 months ago. John Ram, I think we saw the PGA Championship. He just loved he relished being back in the heat of the battle again. Ram would have been my favorite um this week. I know we got some big stars up there and I certainly I’d love to see Rory win in his home country. Uh but I I do think that uh that John Ram is trending towards performance here. He’s he’s won two Irish Open Championships, one of them up the road here in Port Stewart. He’s got a excellent record on on links golf courses. He’s played 17 events. He’s in almost 50% top 10s h and about a 10% win ratio. So he’s well verssed and his golf game is really suited to these kind of conditions. So he would be a guy I’d pinpoint. Then another guy I’d pinpoint as well would be Terrell Hatton. Again a guy who’s had phenomenal performances uh uh you know again 50% top 10s and links I think he’s played 35 links events in his career and and have top 10 and 50% of those with a win ratio of 10% again is a high high rate. So those two guys I would pinpoint uh outside of the ones we talked about with the tea times and T probably more than anybody else will feel as if the US Open was the one that got away with two holes to go he really sort of all not had that tournament in the palm of his hand but he must have really fancied his chances. Yeah and he get a boost from that as well Jamie the fact that he uh because he hasn’t really contended in these majors. He’s won lots of tournaments in the DP World Tour. He’s performed obviously very well over and live but but he’s he’s not really performed at the very very elite level in these majors. And I think a little bit of impetus from playing so well at the at the US Open will stand him in goodstead coming here. Uh just that final tea time I mentioned as well which I wanted to mention. Interesting. I saw that Victor Hovlin’s playing alongside Ludvig Goberg. We know what a what a great pairing they were in the last RDER Cup and Bob McIntyre’s playing alongside Justin Rose and Justin was able to sort of drag along Bob in that Friday in Rome when he wasn’t playing great and then Bob played much better in the Saturday. They’re playing alongside Bryson Desambo, a very contrasting character to Bob McIntyre. But Bob, look, he showed at Oakmont that he is a gritty competitor and he is licking his lips this week. He is. He didn’t have a great Scottish Open last week. He was disappointed with his performance there. But yes, absolutely gritty is the word for it. And you know, we highlight it’s unlike other sports. Uh we do highlight who’s playing with who because there’s a comfort factor in who you’re playing with in these in these major championships. It’s not like tennis that we saw the last few weeks where you’re you’re you’re you’re competing against somebody across the other side of the net and you’re doing everything you can for them not to play well. In golf, you’re competing against the golf course. And that’s why it’s important to feel comfortable mentally on a golf course. And when you’re playing with somebody uh like you mentioned, Justin Rose and Bob McIntyre, that can help. Yeah, absolutely. Um just want to finally mention as well, Podrick Harrington gets the the I don’t know if it is an honor hitting the opening T-shot. I don’t know if it is an honor when you’re alarm 4:00 in the morning. Um but Paul Drake playing alongside Tom McKibben as well. Another early start for him. He had an early start last year, seemed to recall as well. And Nikolai Hygard. So, what will Podrick be feeling it? You know him very well. How will he be feeling about hitting that opening T-shot? Oh, no bother. No bother to Pick. He’s got plenty more open championship. He’s not even thinking about stopping anytime soon. Particle really believed that he can win. And look, I mean, at 59 years of age and Port’s nowhere near that age, Tom Watson nearly won in Turbury, you know, and that’s not that long ago. So, uh, you know, you’re not going to discard anybody uh from winning. And I wouldn’t I wouldn’t be surprised at all to see an older guy raise a gallop. They might won’t do it in the US Open. They won’t do it in the Masters. They won’t do it in a PGA championship, but they could well do it on a Lynx golf course. Uh, and it’s no surprising, and we saw also Greg Norman in later years and at the end of his career performing so well before Public uh beat him there. I think it was at Burkedale. Uh, so so don’t be surprised to see some unusual names coming to the top. And if they’re elder in years, all the better puts a bit of flavor into it. Yeah, absolutely. Paul, thanks as always for your time. All those tea times available for you to see now on the Sky Sports Golf app. Uh obviously it’ll be a bit of a wait for the home fans to see Rory Mroy off at 10 past 3 on Thursday afternoon, but they can get out of their beds nice and early and see Podrick Harrington, the last man to successfully defend the Clar Jug, get the Open Championship underway, the 153rd Open at 6:35 a.m. on Thursday morning.