The Architecture of Royal Portrush | 2025 Open Championship Host | Presented by Mercedes-Benz

The Architecture of Royal Portrush | 2025 Open Championship Host | Presented by Mercedes-Benz

[Music] there’s lots of it out there i mean there’s you could you could probably talk about all of the holes and in some way or other that all the the little uh kind of uh carbunles and uh mounds and runoffs and things like that there that you find out on the golf course but that’s why you know it takes a while to learn a links golf course and local local knowledge is something that we would talk a lot a lot about around here but whether you’re playing Royal Port Rush Royal County Down Valley Bunan Port Marik uh Rosapenna wherever you’re playing you you have to dial into this and you have to embrace it and and look at how you it can it can help you uh as you play the golf course uh because it’s um they take a bit of learning [Music] i think it’s interesting that with so many golf courses you can kind of distill it into like a defining characteristic a defining vista a defining hole and it it feels sort of trit to say but Royal Port Rush is just like this total package of everything whether it’s conditioning whether Whether it’s holes whether it’s the town its history it it has so many things working together for it that that make it indisputably world class and it’s almost as much as any place that you just cannot distill it to one real defining thing
i think one of the things that makes Port Rush so interesting is its history it’s effectively almost like a a representation of golf and its evolution i think probably one of the the the special things about what I do is you know having access to take people out onto this golf course here and and take them around or whether I play with them or whether I meet them before or afterwards and just you know give them the story of the golf course give them the story of how how the place has evolved from Harry Cold times you know you go 1888 you go back to the very origins of the golf course here where but like St andrews you know it used to start and finish up in the town in those days and you know the railway played such an important role in in you know bringing the golfers here and taking them back home again at the end of the at the end of the day when it started it was a course laid out by Tom Morris in the late 1800s that was really close to town and it was on really flat land but it’s almost as if they had an awakening and they realized those dunes were so close by and the course moved into the dunes and that’s when Harry Colt built it harry Colt was one of the great architects ever he did most of his work in the UK swinley Forest Sunningale Rye he built some of the greatest courses and here’s golf kind of evolving and Port Rush evolving moving into the sandy dunescape that it’s in now and really when you think about the open roa of courses Royal Port Rush is the most refined of those courses a lot of the courses in that time period it was very rudimentary design here you’re bringing in arguably the greatest architect in the world and giving him a tapestry that’s among the great plots of land in the world and you know you see this refined golf architecture the sophisticated routing the intricate greens the wellthoughtout bunkers the strategic golf design that is on this Lynx course and I think that’s what defines it and sets it apart from a lot of the other ROA courses is just this was a golf course that was built at the height of the golden age of golf design well it’s it’s exactly what you talked about with the sort of this leading edge of golden age architecture right and that’s that’s evident in the routing right it’s not this classic you go out nine you come back nine and we see this a little bit with Cola Mirfield right it’s a little bit different with the clockwise counterclockwise routing this kind of utilizes all sorts of the different elements of the landscape the big dunes the little dunes the up and down the the greens that sit low greens that sit high you walk out on the first tea and you’re just kind of like this is an open empty field like a a typical Lynx course and then you start to climb and then you go down to the sea i always have heard Bill Core talk about how the best routings are are how you would walk a property so the way it works one plays out and two three and four really play along the property line five takes you out to the edge of the sand dune to the effective cliff of of the golf course and the edge of the property line for that stunning view and then you go inward and you’re looping back and forth inward before you kind of come in for the close so I think that’s like an interesting aspect of the routing is it makes for such a great walk because you have that discovery aspect of it you’re you’re playing along the edges and it makes such a big impression on the fourth and fifth hole and you get out to the edge right on the sea royport Rush has always been known as a great golf course you know it’s it’s on a very special piece of ground here this is incredibly scenic here you’re on a the North Andrew coast the coastline is spectacular uh when you factor in then Harry Colt design into it and you know what it is and you know you’ve got 18 very strong golf holes there’s no two holes that run consecutively in the same direction as well so it’s a course that’s always moving and turning and twisting and you’re you’re dealing with the elements you’re dealing with the wind coming from different directions and you factor in the change of elevation as well and stuff that you don’t ordinarily get on Lynx golf courses yeah that stretch on the front nine is where you know you start your climb up and and it really kind of crescendos as you go up number four and it begins really one of the greatest stretches not just at at Royal Port Rush but obviously in all of golf i think Tom Do on on our podcast said once that great golf courses make an impression in the first five holes i think if you think about Port Rush one plays up gets you away from the clubhouse it can cause some distress as we saw in the open in 2019 two’s you know par five that starts to introduce some of that topography and dunes that you’re going to see and three is a a good par three but four is really where things start to ramp up four is a classic boundary hole it has out of bounds up the whole right side and with great boundary holes where you want to be is as close to the boundary as you possibly can get and how they create this is with a green that is kind of punch bully there are some mounds in front the green angles from right to left there are some mounds behind it and the only way you can see the green and see the whole location is if you’re up the right side because those mounds in the in the ground kind of tumble left and that creates blindness the further left you go and a worse angle to approach the green and then that takes you to to one of the most stunning holes on the course five what did you think of the first time you saw five
i mean it the view obviously is is your first impression right you walk from the fourth green just up to the fifth TE and it’s like an immediate journey you want to take it’s like I don’t know how I’m gonna get there i don’t know how I’m gonna end up there but I want to go right now it’s a hole where it requires thought off the tea the yardage can vary from you know 335 to 385 yards or so on the farthest back for the pros you know one of the things that I think a lot of short par4s encompass like great long shots this is a par five feature too is like as you get closer to the green the amount of risk ramps up and let’s let’s be clear you know on a given day if you’re laying up and then and the whole location’s in the back and you don’t judge the wind just right you you could easily hit a wedge shot out of bounds there and then it leads off that that green and it’s right there on the dune that overlooks the beach and you walk just you know 20 steps and you’re on the 6T you’re exposed and you’re hitting into this green that’s got this really neat shape to it where it’s got this little front part and then it angles left to right which when you think about a green that angles left to right for the predominant golfers that are righty that’s a hard shot your miss is short right so the green amplifies a short miss right and long left and then it’s got that beautiful little back wing to it that is an awesome awesome par three i think that if you if you play well at Royalport Rush you’ll score well but if you if you attack at the wrong time here you can get yourself into into a bit of trouble
oh no but again if you play too safe and you leave yourself too far back from the from the green it’s very hard to access the pins as well you know so you you you there there’s there’s certain holes where you you you’ve got to attack but you you don’t really have an option other than to just stand up and hit the shot i was very surprised that there weren’t more players that came here before the championship and and did more prep work uh and actually come and spend time here and get get time to understand the golf course and understand the uh you know all the all the the little characteristics of it
so you get through some of that that dramatic stretch on the front you get to the middle of the round nine and 10 I found uh incredibly compelling they almost mirror each other one green sits up one green sits down they go in opposite directions and you get to that middle of the round and it really like provokes some thought port Rush the Dunloo has the massive dunes you might see on the right side of seven but the right of 10 sort of those those humps and bumps the waves within the dunes it speaks to some of the amazing like sort of natural beauty which you know you can challenge you can try to send it up there and so I found that to be an incredibly uh challenging and thoughtprovoking hole there in the middle of the round at nine and 10
such a cool green too it’s it’s long and narrow and it sits kind of down in a hollow it’s a beautiful green that again dayto-day variety when that pins all the way back is going to play completely different than when the whole location’s up front what you hit on in the middle stretch i think the diversity of of topography on the outer stretches of the Dunloose course you get really big dunes big contours that you navigate in the middle in the heart of the golf course there’s a lot more humansized contours and smaller choppier stuff and in this stretch that’s where you see a lot of repelling greens the uh eighth repels you have the ninth then you go and the 11th the 12th and the 14th are all big repelling greens so this stretch of golf while it’s not as dramatic as the other golf this is going to be the biggest test of iron play in a way the shine goes to the beginning and the closing stretches at Port Rush but in this middle stretch I think this is where it becomes like a real championship golf course because the caliber of shots you have to hit to score is so so high because of the way so many of the greens sit up and are crowned well for a lot of the players uh well the vast majority of the players have never played here before um and this is a this was a a new venue and I think with a link a seaside links golf courses there’s a lot of idiosyncrasies and units is that the they’ve got to try to work out because you’re you’re playing a it’s more of a bouncing ball situation as well one of the things that did catch a lot of the players out we we have a lot of false fronts i mean there’s eight or nine of the greens have kind of false fronts so the ball appears to be on the green but it’s not and then it starts to come back and and rolls back off again so often lynx courses greens are very simple they just have kind of tilt this way this way and really the art of shaping a green in the 1880s didn’t really exist so at Port Rush what you see is greens that have knobs and different sections and tears that create more strategic golf a great example of this is is the fifth hole this is going to be a hole that everybody talks about but the features that were built in that hole are what make it so great and the one that I always think about besides the the mound that’s in front of the green is the mound that’s kind of on the left edge of the green and there’s just this kind of knob and they have a front tier and a back tier and the knob sits there and if you hit a shot perfectly that knob can gather the ball and funnel it back to a backright pin it allows you to avoid some of the big risk that’s up the right side of that hole but if you catch on the wrong side of that knob it just sheds the ball away and then that knob’s going to sit right in between you and the hole location you’re trying to get to so it’s like that little knob is a a representation of something that in the 1920s was a feasible feature to build and build really well and the artistry if you look at those greens you hit on earlier the variation of them how they sit up they sit down some gather many of them repel away but then when you get deep into the greens you see all the little bumps and fingers and and cuts that create widely different dynamics dayto-day based off of hole locations the routing the change in routing has really improved the closing five I would say but for me it’s 14 through 17 just leave you kind of breathless all the way through i talked to the pro Gary McNeel has been there 25 plus years it’s a great kind of amateur legendary amateur in his own day and what he said about Port Rush is if you’re playing well like it’s a really fun golf course that will reward if you’re playing well i think 14 sort of can really illustrate that obviously off the tea there’s a lot of width more to the right right it’s kind of pushing you to the right then you’re the approach is coming in to a green that’s screaming down into that bunker off the left it’s a menacing kind of green to approach and and sort of blends in all the the classic sort of strategy of of what is the proper angle you don’t really have a bailout for your second shot on the 14th it’s a tabletop green with a with a a cavernous bunker on the left hand side because you’re playing uphill it’s very difficult bunker to not just get your ball onto the green but to hold the green with your uh with your bunker shot as well so there’s there isn’t really a bail out there you have to you have to hit your your shot onto the green it’s as simple as that
and then it just kind of keeps crescendoing i know you love 15 was maybe one of your f maybe your favorite hole there i mean 15 it’s unforgettable you kind of climb up the hill playing up to the left it’s not a long par4 but you know it’s just one of those great horizon lines in golf where you’re just looking at this beautiful green i I just think that’s like just an unforgettable shot at Port Rush
i think that the 15th green then the 14th green are two remarkable green complexes and I and I know that a lot of the well-known golf course designers and architects when they come here they really enjoy going and really connecting with those greens and just you can see them out there photographing and sketching things and making notes and then you’ve got Calamity Corner you’ve got number 16 which is such a brute of a hole and a and a potential card wrecker but you’ve got that little safe you got Bobby Locks the little hollow to the left of the green as well where a lot of the players find themselves and then and that’s somewhere safe where you where you can hit it particularly when it’s now stretched out to two 236 from the championship T as well i’m not sure you see that really anywhere else in the world that kind of that drop off they call it calamity corner for a reason and you know even the best in the world are going to be hitting lawn irons lumber one of my favorite things about 16 is that really great players choose the safe route and I think what happens at 16 is that you get over to the left which is safe it looks fairly inviting the first time you play it and you get over there and then you realize how terrible a place it is so what it does over the course of a tournament you begin to see somebody nudge their their aim point a little bit more and more right but then you know if you end up down right you then nudge your your aim point back left and it’s just this like constant battle of figuring out how aggressive you want to play on 16 it’s a one of the most wonderful natural topographical holes in the world when you just think about the land what it gave you and it’s like oh we’re going to have a T here and we’re putting the green there let’s continue on to 17 i think this stretch we’re talking about we’re blending the natural sort of assets with some real strategy what’s now the 17th hole there’s a big drop drop off down to the down to the green from about 130 20 yards out where the ball can kind of can break left or can break right on the approach to the green it just you know you you you’ve got to be very careful if you’re going to roll the ball into that green or go for the green with the T-OT one of the great philosophical designs for the professional game is the idea of giving pros two undesirable choices if you lay up to the top of 17 they don’t want to do that you’re up there and you’re hitting a wedge which gets up in the air to a small target down below the ball just stays in the air too long so then it’s like well I’ll hit driver and bash it down there but it’s blind you can’t see where you’re going and it feels like a bit of chance i’m just kind of hitting it and hoping that it it takes the right bounce and gets all the way down there and if it does it’s great but if it gets caught along the way on the downs slope in either tall grass or in that little bunker on the left you’re you’re left with a brutal shot so off the tea that hole presents two bad options and you have to pick one of them and I think that’s what makes it a really fun hole these guys don’t want to hit either of those shots uh and then I guess let’s just close it out 18 it’s a brute it’s a longer par4 for this course out of bounds looming down the left side very easily reachable bunkers kind of on the line of charm to the green and obviously the fairway narrows dramatically yeah it’s definitely not my favorite hole on the golf course it kind of just prescribes everybody’s hitting a long shot into the 18th green and when you’re talking about closing out an open championship you know that has its own quality to it what I love most about Royal Port Rush is is it has everything it has the nearby sea has the turf has the town feel uh but it has a lot of like elevation change right it combines all these factors to create one of the great championship tests that if you’re playing well uh rewards you it’s just like a really fun place to play golf either in a championship setting or in a weekend round and obviously it’s a classic kind of golf town on the north coast of Ireland it just has it all as a championship golf course and like a fun Lynx course steeped in history throughout that view remains the same out there that that all those all those holes are out there and and all the drama that’s been out there over the years be it in amateur events or open championship events you know the you know the the roar of the crowds and the you know when Shane lifted the clar jug on the 18th green or Darren Clark hit off the first te and that you know the first shot in the open here for 68 years from Max Faulner puts out on the 18th green in 1951 that’s those are those are special events and and sometimes you can go and you get a quiet moment to yourself and you stand on the first te and you can imagine what what all that was like and imagine whenever I I got that opportunity to do the blame marker you back onto the first tea again and just sort of imagine gosh this is where it all happened here this is the same spot I’m standing in where all of a sudden there was a couple of thousand people sort of almost on top of you in that that kind of arena at the first tea you know but it’s it’s it’s it’s such a special special place this [Music]

Andy Johnson and Brendan Porath — with the help of Head Professional, Gary McNeill — sit down to discuss the host of this year’s Open Championship, Royal Portrush. Site of Shane Lowry’s famous 2019 win, Harry Colt’s dramatic links, set on Northern Ireland’s Antrim Coast, hadn’t seen an Open since Max Faulkner won it in 1951. Possibly the most refined of any of the current rota courses, Portrush boasts undulating greens and an inspired routing through a dramatic and diverse seaside dunescape.

Thank you to our friends at Mercedes-Benz for their support of this Royal Portrush Golf Club Preview, home of The 153rd Open. Mercedes-Benz has been partnered with The Open since 2011, rooted in shared values, commitment to excellence, and bridging tradition with modern luxury. Mercedes-Benz SUVs are the perfect companions for golf enthusiasts seeking performance, style, and space on the way to the course, and the GLS stands out as the pinnacle of this lineup.

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