‘Right up there’ – Portrush shines for Open week

Only the Open Championship could make a small, seaside town in Northern Ireland feel like the centre of the sporting universe.

While an overwhelming majority of the huge crowds were willing home favourite Rory McIlroy to victory, that it was the world number one who denied the story its fairytale ending still felt wholly fitting.

Other events of this size are played out in cities of similar stature, but the sight of superstar Scottie Scheffler hoisting the Claret Jug on the 18th green of a brilliant, yet remote, course tucked away on the north coast of the island of Ireland summed up what is unique about this championship.

There have been plenty of similarly seemingly incongruous scenes over the past seven days.

Whether it be multi-millionaires getting their morning coffee in establishments where an Ulster fry would set you back less than £7, a former Open winner becoming a repeat customer at a small pie shop on the main street or the defending champion sinking a stout round the corner, The Open did not just come to town, it became a part of it for the duration of its stay.

Australian Cameron Smith, who won his Claret Jug at St Andrews in 2022, could hardly have paid Portrush a bigger compliment than comparing it to the home of golf.

“It seems like there’s a lot of Opens where the course is great but the town doesn’t really get involved, whereas this one kind of seems like everyone in town is happy to have you here and gets around the whole tournament,” he said.

In a week that began with the eventual winner questioning the meaning of it all, there was great purpose in the way the first arriving fans flooded through the gates and on to the course after word spread that McIlroy had snuck out for a practice round at the earliest available opportunity.

Those first holes on Monday, and his stints watching chunks of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer between rounds, must have felt like the briefest slices of quiet for the most recent member of golf’s Grand Slam club.

At all other points around Royal Portrush, galleries thronged around the Holywood star, the roars that greeted each of his made putts reverberating across the links.

While his walk off the 18th green was without the Claret Jug, the love for the returning hero – playing at home for the first time since his Masters victory – was a far more fitting conclusion to his week than the tearful missed cut back in 2019.

But it was not just McIlroy who sparked adoration. Americans Bryson DeChambeau and Jordan Spieth, as well as England’s Tommy Fleetwood, were among other huge draws obliging as many requests for selfies and autographs as time allowed.

The thump of children’s feet along grandstands as players neared with golf balls sounded like the promised thunder.

So keen were others to take home a souvenir of their week by more conventional means, queues for the merchandise tent snaked round multiple sets of barriers with one visitor reportedly spending £13,000 in one transaction.

Others were content with more transitory pleasures. On Padraig Harrington’s insistence that Royal Portrush had the best ice creams on The Open rota, there seemed general agreement after what was surely a record number of 99s consumed up and down the links.

A more uniquely Northern Irish staple – the ‘fifteen’ traybake – proved more divisive in the media centre.

The coconut-based treat was not all that failed to gain universal popularity. Jason Day was left confounded by local weather forecasts as the week proved true the old cliche about Northern Ireland featuring all four seasons in one day, while marathon rounds on Thursday left a few players grumbling about bottlenecks on the course.

Those that took the time to look around as they waited, though, were rewarded with the spectacular views that make Portrush such a memorable course for the hacker and world’s best player alike.

“It’s one of the coolest views that I’ve seen in the game of golf, to be honest with you,” said Scheffler of the course’s signature hole Calamity Corner.

Even Shane Lowry, who had the best golf day of his life here six years ago when winning the 148th Open Championship, cut a wholly frustrated figure at points during a weekend when he was handed a two-shot penalty on Friday and struggled with illness in his third round.

Still, after a brilliant closing 66 on Sunday, Royal Portrush had clearly redeemed itself in the Offaly man’s eyes when all was said and done.

Asked by BBC Sport NI when would he like to see The Open be back here for its fourth staging, he replied: “How about next year?”