Sneak Peek: This article will appear in the July 22 issue of Global Golf Post.
PORTRUSH, NORTHERN IRELAND | It will be the locals as much as an all-round love of the links which will prompt the Open Championship’s return to Portrush sooner than later. When Rory McIlroy spoke of how quickly he had felt at home when he returned to this favourite haunt of his golfing youth, he sounded no more comfortable than anyone else. Every competitor was basking in the warmth of a traditional Irish welcome.
Take Tiger Woods, for whom Royal Portrush is clearly up there with the best of the Open venues. When he was asked about being in Ireland, he delivered one of his full-on smiles as he remembered the days when he, Mark O’Meara and Payne Stewart would mix with the locals during assorted Irish fishing trips. In which connection, since this is not something to which Tiger himself was ever likely to refer, there was a time when the three of them were joining in with the local chat and someone mentioned a little boy who was sadly too ill to come and see Tiger. What happened next was that Tiger went to see him.
Speaking of the people in Portrush last week, Woods described them as “fantastic …They’re so respectful.”
As Mark Steinberg, his manager, would add, “The Irish don’t fuss over Tiger; they’re just friendly – and it’s why he feels more at home here than anywhere else other, perhaps, than Japan. … I’m not saying he feels uncomfortable in the other countries he visits but this is special.”
Meanwhile, Justin Rose, when he was asked if Guinness tasted better when served in its homeland, identified that it was less the Guinness itself than “the environment in which you drink it.” He was equally taken with the Irish people’s instinctive know-how when it came to dealing with golfing fame. When he had been in the town, people had asked for the odd selfie, but there was nothing over the top: “They were letting me enjoy myself.”
All the Callaway players at the Open were given lucky Irish golf bags in emerald green, along with a box of commemorative golf balls featuring four-leaf clovers. Meanwhile, the hexagon theme underlying the emerald exterior of the bags was a nod to the nearby Giant’s Causeway and its interlocking basalt columns.
Danny Willett, for one, was revelling in the bag and its story of an Irish giant and his Scottish equivalent coming to blows.
“I’m a great believer in the luck of the Irish,” Willett said. “The Irish are a very warm bunch of people and I think I’m like a lot of players in getting a good energy from them.”
America’s Jimmy Walker, in giving serious consideration as to whether the Irish were luckier than most, was not inclined to disagree with the notion, only then he started to wonder if all golfing champions were blessed in that department. “A top golfer has to be in the right place at the right time if he’s going to be a major winner and that, in itself, has to have a lot to do with luck.”
Li Haotong from China went along with the idea of the Irish being lucky before making the point that they were not the luckiest. In his opinion, that label belongs to the Chinese.
This winner of the 2016 USPGA Championship remembers winning a tournament in which one of his drives down the stretch was within the proverbial whisker of being out of bounds. A couple of referees had arrived with measuring tapes and pieces of string and, after much deliberation, they decided that it was in bounds by half a golf ball.
“That was my piece of out-and-out luck,” said Walker. “If it had been out of bounds, I wouldn’t have won.”
Li Haotong from China went along with the idea of the Irish being lucky before making the point that they were not the luckiest. In his opinion, that label belongs to the Chinese.
Where the Irish favour green – an Indian astronaut of my acquaintance once said that Ireland was the only country on the planet that looked green from space – the Chinese set much store in the colour red. Lucky numbers similarly connote good fortune, with a rich businessman not so long ago paying $140,000 to have a number plate featuring four figure eights on his car. This, in turn, prompted the thought that if Li Haotong happened to be shaping well at Portrush on Sunday, he would happily fork out $140,000 not to have an 8 on his scorecard.
The “luck of the Irish” expression apparently originated as a saying which referred to the people’s bad luck in being the victims of famines and invasions. Tom Turner, one of an amazing crew of volunteers at Royal Portrush, said it was down to this difficult past that the Irish tended not to have too high expectations. “But when something goes right – like when we punch above our weight in golf’s majors or at rugby, we celebrate and, yes, we think we’re lucky.”
In keeping with which, if the Irish deemed it ridiculously bad luck that they had not been given an Open since 1951, it followed that they would think themselves lucky when they got one. And that they will be feeling luckier beyond belief when they learn that they will be getting another as soon as is decently possible.