Tiger Woods, Rory McIlroy and Shane Lowry may have attracted thousands of spectators during the 148th Open Championship but it was the Royal Portrush members who lined the fairways to back their local hero one weekend in July.
When the Open Championship returns to Royal Portrush in 2025, Head PGA Professional Gary McNeill will hope to relive the dream that he experienced four years ago.
McNeill played as a marker for the weekend of the 2019 Open and teed up alongside Paul Waring and Ashton Turner after the halfway cut fell on an uneven number of players. As is tradition, the honour of essentially ‘making up the numbers’ is given to the PGA professional in the host club.
For the members of Royal Portrush, seeing their local pro battle it out at a major championship was as thrilling as seeing Tiger and co.
“It was a great experience I was involved in the committee in the club here the whole way through and very much involved in the retail and I enjoyed the interaction with the other host venues and the other pros at the host venues because everybody’s role was slightly different,” said McNeill who managed to break 80 on both days and had and his caddie Paul ‘The Rocket’ Rodich – a member for almost 50 years – alongside him.
“When it came to dealing with the playing marker situation which traditionally lands on the club pro, the interest in chatting to the other guys, some had gone in for it but the cut fell on an even number, others had turned it down and had regretted it so it was a mish mash of other things. I was very determined to do it and I was glad I did it in the end I put a lot of preparation into it and got my game into decent shape, it was quite an experience.”
McNeill has been the club professional at Royal Portrush for over two decades and has developed a strong friendship with 2011 Champion Golfer of the Year, Darren Clarke while also dabbling in some light coaching with Pádraig Harrington and Graeme McDowell.
The Northern Irishman enjoyed a distinguish amateur career, winning the 1991 Irish Amateur Championship in Ballybunion, winning an Irish Boys Championship and representing Ulster and Ireland at every level and Great Britain and Ireland at Boys and Youths level.
He became a PGA professional and began his coaching career in Royal County Down. Poor to his appointment at Royal Portrush, he was the Head Professional at The MacGregor Academy and Head Coach to the Ulster teams. He has also been a multiple winner on the Irish PGA circuit.
Plenty of experience under his belt, but nothing could prepare him for the first tee shot at the Open Championship. On Saturday, on live television, in front of packed grandstands.
“I’m coming out of the pro shop to tee it up! I was hitting it OK on the range so I wasn’t too nervous on the first tee,” explained McNeill. “It did go very quiet once I settled in to play the shot and I was very numb when I made the swing I could hardly feel anything at all. It wasn’t a great shot it was a bit low and down the left hand side but I was OK after that.
“It was about getting off the first tee because I had thought so much about it and what it would be like and a few times I had gone there myself before the Open and try to imagine what it would be like. You don’t know until 9pm the night before if you will be playing or not but you spend the week preparing in a way that you are expecting to play.”
Lowry would take over Saturday afternoon with a barnstorming performance but before that could happen, McNeill stole the show and drew arguably the loudest roar of the day with a 45-foot birdie putt across the seventeenth green to bring the double grandstand surrounding the green to its feet.
“The support out there was unbelievable. That was Saturday, nine thirty start and I can remember the word going out was that anyone going to the Open for the third round was advised to get there early so of course when I teed off the place was jammed and the grandstands were full of people.
“By the time we got around to 17 there was a huge double grandstand along 17 and 13 on both sides of the greens and they were both full. I was very much aware of that playing the 13th, the par-3 down the hill and then we went around the loop and came back to the 17th and the pin was right hand side and my second shot was just about on the green on the left. I was trying to roll it close and it managed to fall in, it was unbelievable. A fantastic experience, it made it on to the live feed!”
The 2019 Open Championship was a sell-out for the first time in the history of golf’s oldest Major when a record-breaking 237,750 fans set an attendance record for a Championship staged outside St Andrews.
It was the second largest crowd ever to attend an Open and McNeill paid tribute to the Royal Portrush members who helped put on such a magnificent show and will do so again in 2025.
“The members are very proud of the fact we hosted the Open Championship in 2019 and are hosting it again in two years. They all attended, wore their club blazers and jackets and they were falling over themselves to help out and volunteer during the championship itself, whatever needed to be done. They really enjoyed the hosting of the championship.
“They do go through a lot of sacrifice not least of all the course protection measures and they lose the opportunity to play the course I feel they are generally very proud that we have hosted the championship.”
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