Golf’s Inherent Cruelty Rears Head At Portrush

PORTRUSH, NORTHERN IRELAND | Even now, after all these tears, the most remarkable thing about golf is that anyone continues to play it.

It has broken more hearts than summertime romances and crushed more dreams than alarm clocks.

Late Sunday afternoon someone will stand on the 18th green at Royal Portrush, cradling the Claret Jug for having just won the Open Championship, awash in cheers and a salty sea breeze and it will be a deep, rich and enduring victory worth celebrating.

Everyone else is likely to leave bent, bruised or broken if Thursday was a hint of what’s to come. In a game that’s sometimes challenging to watch as it plods along, it was impossible to turn away on a Thursday that included weather spells that touched on all four seasons and felt at times like an episode of Stranger Things.

Consider the holy trinity of Northern Irish golf: Darren Clarke, Graeme McDowell and Rory McIlroy, whose accomplishments were emotional drivers of this championship’s return to Northern Ireland after 68 years away.

If golf had...