Rónán MacNamara in Portrush
Pádraig Harrington loves his hundreds and thousands, but on Thursday he will settle for anything in the sixties I’m sure as he gets the 153rd Open Championship underway at Royal Portrush.
There’s no such thing as a quick word with Harrington. Even he knows that at this stage. The classic Irish media huddle surrounded the Dubliner as he delivered more words of wisdom, great yarns and some witty answers which drew giggles from the ever increasing crowd.
At 53, waking up at approximately 3am is not for the faint hearted so he may well need one of his beloved Open Championship 99s to boost his energy around the turn.
Harrington, a two time champion golfer of the year, and a veteran of 27 Opens is better placed than most to give his take on major championships and having sampled a 99 ice cream cone at each and every links venue, Royal Portrush has the best on offer both in terms of size and quality.
“I will have to say in my considered opinion, we do the best 99s here. I’ve tested a 99 at every Open venue and these are the best, definitely the biggest and the nicest so far,” Harrington said in a wacky tangent when asked about the potential of the Open being played in Portmarnock in the future.
First hole jitters for Rory
There is absolutely no way that Rory McIlroy hasn’t thought about his infamous first tee shot in 2019 and the quadruple bogey 8 that followed and one would think he will have a brief flashback before he approaches the tee on Thursday afternoon.
Apparently he has played the opening hole four times this week already and has hit out of bounds twice and is yet to find the fairway…
Better late than never if he manages to find the short stuff on Thursday. He might save himself four shots.
Portrush says no to utter woke nonsense
Is there anything more pointless in golf than a golfer attempting murder as he recklessly belts a ball towards thousands of helpless people sitting in a grandstand at the back of a green simply because it is the best miss from his position on approach to the green?
Well the R&A have basically said, kill the people if you must, but your free drop won’t come with total relief. You want a drop? Sure thing, hack one out from the bushes there like a good lad.
So, beneath the grandstands lie large ferns surrounding a measly DZ sign. These are the nastiest set of drop zones you will ever see.
Maybe laying up short of the green will be best practice.
A Calamitous Corner
On Wednesday afternoon, the Legion XIII trio Jon Rahm, Tom McKibbin, and Tyrrell Hatton were joined by Jakob Skov Olesen and played the back nine. Calamity Corner, the iconic par-3 16th, had a right-to-left wind that was slightly helping. All four hit long irons, all favoured the left side of the green, only one of the quartet managed to find the putting surface, and he had a good 60 feet left to the hole.
These were all good shots and good misses though. Walking towards the green, Jon Rahm said that playing the hole into a left-to-right hurting breeze would make it nearly impossible from the back tees.
Calamity Corner could be very well named.
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