Rónán MacNamara in Portrush
Tuesday at the Open Championship and the traffic is heavy en route to Royal Portrush for the penultimate practice day.
Once again though, you would have had to be the very early bird, with no time to stop and eat a worm, if you wanted to catch Rory McIlroy’s practice round as he set off at the crack of dawn again on the Dunluce Links.
As happened at Royal Troon last year, the three generations of Northern Irish golf joined forces as McIlroy, Darren Clarke and Tom McKibbin hit the fairways and were finished just before 11am.
Clarke, just a month short of his 57th birthday is striking the ball as good as ever according to 22-year-old McKibbin.
The Dungannon man hit the first tee shot back in 2019. But while retirement talk has been circling around the 2011 Open champion, McKibbin believes Clarke is playing too well to pack in his Claret Jug career.
“He’s playing great,” McKibbin said of the man 34 years his senior. “He strikes the ball amazing. Every time I’ve got to spend time with him, he flushes it. He played lovely out there today. So think with how good he knows this place and how well he hit the ball and flight it in links conditions, I’m sure he’ll be looking forward to this week and looking hopefully to have a good one.”
The last – and by no means least – member of this home trio was of course McIlroy, who has a more receding hairline than his compatriots put together.
He will have his own first tee pressures this week.
Great to be among friends
Rory McIlroy was the surprise guest at Tuesday’s Association of Golf Writers dinner when he donned a very famous green number on stage when he collected an award.
Yes Rory, this does make up for some of the missed press conferences. A witty gag he threw out in his first line on stage as he acknowledged that it was nice to be among friends.
There were three options that the grand slam winner could have chosen. Show up, attend via video link, or have someone collect the award on his behalf. To show up and give even more of his already precious time is a mark of the man.
Oh, and he would love to see Justin Rose win the Claret Jug this week after the Englishman had an unfortunate front row seat to his Augusta heroics. Another classy touch.
Unlucky 13th
It took until Min Woo Lee (shot number 9) to hit the par-3 13th green.
An amphitheatric hole, back to back with the 17th, surrounded by grandstands, there will be plenty of oohs and aahs this week.
A fairly unassuming looking hole but an all Canadian fourball failed to hit the green before Pádraig Harrington, Bryan Newman (A), Christiaan Bezuidenhout and Lee all missed the dance floor.
Lee did stitch a ball to six-feet at the second attempt.
It was amazing to see four balls from the two groups land short of the front bunker which is fifteen yards shy of the putting surface.
Makes the regular hacker feel good about themselves.
