PORTRUSH, NORTHERN IRELAND | Phillip Allen, the president of Marine & Lawn Hotels & Resorts, slipped into his seat at a high-top table just off the bustling lobby in the Portrush Adelphi hotel during Open Championship week and took a moment to consider how something so seemingly self-evident hadn’t happened until now. “I would love to say we had this grand strategy from the beginning. There was a little strategy but also a little bit of dumb luck,” Allen said, settling in to tell the story of how Marine & Lawn has become the proprietor of some of the most prestigious golf hotels in Scotland and Northern Ireland before recently expanding to the United States. “Business is good. It’s been strong from the beginning. In retrospect it seems kind of obvious, why wasn’t somebody else doing this?” What Marine & Lawn, with the backing of AJ Capital Partners and its founder and CEO Ben Weprin, has done is create a portfolio of comfortably elegant golf-centric hotels that have been restored to their former glory. The Portrush Ade...