Rory McIlroy was searching for the words, though he had no need of them. The catch in his voice said it all. “Rory, Rory, Rory,” the spectators were chanting.
The golfer had just produced a thriller Agatha Christie would envy. The twist in the tale could not have been more dramatic when he sank a putt as long as the Nile on the 18th hole on his way to snatch what seemed an impossible victory in the Irish Open.
Four months ago, he strode into the history books by winning the Masters in the US, becoming only the sixth player and the first European to complete a career grand slam, but last Sunday evening in Kildare was special.
It culminated in a love-in on a divided island with a young man who, like many of his post-Troubles generation in Northern Ireland, refuses to be trapped in the ancient pigeonholes of identity.
This was about much more than birdies and bogeys. His voice crackled with feeling as he exulted in coming home to win his national tournament and being among “these people”, gesturing towards the crowd.
The green and orange of Irish flags billowed with celebration; not the hatred they too often symbolise.
Nelson Mandela believed sport could make the world better. “We need inspiration, Francois,” his Invictus movie incarnation urged South Africa captain Francois Pienaar before the 1995 Rugby World Cup. “Because in order to build our nation we must exceed our own expectations.”
But sport has the power to divide, too. That danger is greatest when it ditches its standards. The decision to stage next September’s Irish Open at Donald Trump’s golf club in Co Clare looks guaranteed to divide. For, if the prospect of Establishment Ireland swooning over the planet’s most notorious golf cheat inspires anything, it is contempt. This decision does not exceed Ireland’s expectations. It rips them up.
[ Donald Trump’s course in Doonbeg to host the Amgen Irish Open next yearOpens in new window ]
Donald Trump was met with booing from the audience when he attended the US Open men’s singles final between Carlos Alcaraz and Jannik Sinner. Photograph: Kevin Dietsch/ Getty Images
Masses of Irish people have consistently expressed an expectation that tyrants like Vladimir Putin and Binyamin Netanyahu will be held to account by the law. That goes for Trump too. He has spent every waking hour since becoming US president in January breaking laws and sucking up to the demonic duo.
Spectators at the men’s US Open tennis final in New York responded to their president’s presence there with thunderous booing last Saturday. Yet the Taoiseach has stated that, if the pouting Potus decides to visit his Trump International Golf Links for the Irish Open, “there’s no question that [he] will be welcome to Ireland”.
Business people in Clare are already shampooing the red carpet in expectation of a spending bonanza flooding their cash tills.
Many golfers resent their sport’s image as an elitist pursuit for the moneyed; less a game of two halves than a game for the “haves”. Not everyone can afford club membership, green fees, a bag of irons and four free hours in the day for what GK Chesterton called an expensive version of marbles.
The stereotype caricature golfer saunters around the course in pinstripe plus-fours making deals and dispensing business cards with leather-gloved hand. That, of course, is entirely unfair to the millions of golfers who play the game for nothing more than the sheer pleasure of it. They are ill-served by those who pull the sport’s strings and the image of it they convey as a money-making machine. Even Trump would not have been stupid enough to buy a string of courses, stretching from Scotland and California to Florida, Oman and Indonesia, if there was not gold in their bunkers.
The news that an additional €30 million is being sought from the public to host the 2027 Ryder Cup in Adare is mind-blowing. The State has already designated €58 million to support the event and has set aside another €150 million for a 7km bypass, a new railway line and other infrastructural improvements to facilitate it. We are told the cost to the exchequer of security, park-and-ride provision and local authority outlay was grossly underestimated.
[ Trump’s Doonbeg hotel and golf course: Its problematic planning history explainedOpens in new window ]
For the majority of people in Ireland, the Irish Open in Doonbeg signifies nothing more than an grandiose extravagance. Photograph: Charles McQuillan/ Getty Images
That explanation gives no solace to families struggling to buy groceries and pay electricity bills as prices keep rising. Nor will it console the one in five children the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) says are living below the poverty line when housing costs are factored into the equation.
It has the sting of a slap in the face for parents of children with special needs who are being denied an education and children whose spines are shrivelling in long surgery queues. These are people unlikely to be swanning off to the Ryder Cup at Adare Manor, the five-star hotel and golf course owned by tax exile JP McManus.
A report by Deloitte on the economic impact of hosting the biennial Europe-versus-US men’s competition in 2006 at the K Club – half-owned then by another non-tax resident, Michael Smurfit – described the profile of attendees as being “skewed towards the upper end of the socio-economic scale”, with 90 per cent being in the ABC1 groups.
Only 3 per cent came from “lower socio-economic groupings” which, the report said, “illustrates the general ‘upmarket’ profile of those with an interest in golf”. A sizeable proportion of those attending were corporate guests.
Minister for Sport Patrick O’Donovan, whose Limerick constituency encompasses Adare, has defended the State’s funding for the event, saying a road bypass – which should have been built before now – and a new rail link between Foynes port and Limerick city with a stop in the heritage village will be elements of its legacy. His constituents will, undoubtedly, be hearing all about those bonuses from Government canvassers on the doorsteps in the next general election.
Big sports events are money-spinners. Local hotels and restaurants benefit at the time, while vast global television audiences may generate future tourist numbers. The biggest beneficiaries, however, are the organisers – the PGA of America and Ryder Cup Europe in this case – who take the lion’s share of the revenue.
Adare Manor can expect future returns too, after being showcased on the international stage as a prestigious golf venue. When the Ryder Cup was last played in Europe in 2023, 47 broadcast companies beamed the Roman course around the world.
For the majority of people in Ireland, though, the Ryder Cup in Adare and the Irish Open in Doonbeg signify nothing more than grandiose extravagances with too high a price to pay.
