Gary Murphy has never played Galgorm Castle, but he’s hoping that its reputation as a testing golf course and his own taste for tough setups prove a match made in heaven at this week’s Black Desert NI Legends.
“I’ve never played the course, but I commentated there at the mixed event [The ISPSP HANDA World Invitational in 2023] so I’ve got good recall of the course and I’m really looking forward to playing it,” Murphy said. “It’s a very good golf course, I enjoyed working there, and because it’s quite tight, it’s a golf course that you really need to be accurate on.
“I think if you can drive it really well, that sets you up, and I’m driving the ball pretty well at the moment, so we’ll see how it goes.”
With limited status on the Legends Tour in 2025, Murphy hasn’t had as many starts as he’d have liked, but he feels that his game is in good shape, even if the results haven’t necessarily borne that out.
And he saw enough positive signs at the K Club Pro-Am to know that he’s capable of putting in another strong performance on the Legends Tour on home soil after good showings at Seapoint in 2024 and at Mount Juliet in his home county back in May.
“Yeah, I hit the ball really nicely the first day and had a couple of blips,” he recalled of The K Club Pro-Am. “I played the wrong ball on one hole and had a two-shot penalty, and then I got a bad mud ball on another hole which was the equivalent of a two-shot penalty, and I ended up shooting three-over on the North.
“Then on the South I was four-under with three to play and through one or two bad shots and one or two bad pieces of luck I finished poorly. I actually was away the previous week and got a good bit of practice in, and I hit the ball really nicely at the K Club, so if I can continue that, with a little bit of luck the other side, I think I’ll have a decent week at Galgorm.
“I’m in this week, but I might only get one or two more starts, so I need to play really well this week. Ideally, I win it, and that gets me in a different ranking and then you’re able to pick and choose where you want to play, which would be fantastic, but a top-five would get me into the next event so that’s the goal really. Anything above that would be a bonus.”
The competitive edge is something that he admits he struggled to fully regain when he became eligible for the Legends Tour in late 2022, but as the saying goes, hunger is a great sauce, and the prospect of losing tour status has reignited the fire.
“The biggest challenge is that fine line between going out and trying to enjoy yourself, but having that competitive edge as well,” he explained. “It’s taken me a bit longer to really get into it than I thought it would, but I’ve found from chatting with some of the guys that played on tour even longer into their careers and then had that three- or four-year gap, they struggled to get that edge back too.
“But now, if I have a lesson at The K Club at, say, 8 o’clock, I’ll be there an hour-and-a-half earlier and I’ll get a lot of work done. Or I’ll be down at Baltray at 6am when nobody is else around and I’ll be putting the work in.
“And it’s a bit of a ‘back to the wall’ situation for me this week, so I’m planning to be ready from the get-go on Friday.”
Murphy has traditionally played well closer to home, finishing third in the Irish Open at Adare Manor in 2008, and sixth in the Smurfit European Open at The K Club in 2006, so it’s no surprise that he was delighted when another Legends Tour event on the island was confirmed earlier this year.
“Oh, it’s phenomenal,” he said. “It really is. I believe there’s a lot of investment going into Galgorm, so hopefully we can have a great week and showcase the resort, but it’s fabulous to have two events on the island.
“And the Irish events generally are very good because, you know, the standard of golf across the board is a lot better than you get in some other places. Because we play as a Pro-Am format for two days, a lot of the amateurs here are used to playing in Pro-Ams; they understand the etiquette of it all.”
The Black Desert NI Legends kicks off with a Celebrity Pro-Am on Wednesday, featuring the likes of legendary jockey Tony McCoy, former Irish Rugby International Ian Humphreys, and Golden Globe nominated actor, James Nesbitt. And the tournament itself runs from Friday through Sunday.
To come and watch Gary Murphy, Ian Woosnam, and many others including Ryder Cup stars and multiple European Tour winners, tickets are available at the following link, and all children under 16 are admitted free of charge.
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