Doonbeg Waits for the Wind
The road into Doonbeg does not prepare you for it. You come down through Kilrush and the Clare hedgerows and the land stays flat and ordinary and faintly agricultural, and then the dunes arrive all at once — a mile and a half of them, crescent-shaped along Doughmore Bay, standing over the beach like something that was put there on purpose. Sixteen of the eighteen holes look out at the Atlantic. The other two are presumably just being modest.
From 10 to 13 September, the Amgen Irish Open comes here for the first time. Not the first time in a while. The first time.
A links that has never been asked the question
Greg Norman laid the course out in 2002, and for a decade or so it was admired more than it was tested. Then the Trump Organization bought the property in February 2014 for around €15 million and handed the golf course to Dr Martin Hawtree, who spent two years and a reported €5 million rebuilding it — every one of Norman's eighteen greens redone, the bunkering refined, several holes re-routed altogether. The short par-four sixth and the par-three ninth were pushed out along the beach at Doughmore, which is either inspired or reckless depending on which way the wind is blowing when you play them.
What Hawtree produced is a links that has never hosted a DP World Tour event and therefore has no scoring history, no received wisdom, and no shortlist of holes the commentators already know how to talk about. Nobody can tell you what a good score is at Doonbeg in September because nobody has needed to know. That is unusual, and it is quite a lot of fun.
The other thing about Doonbeg is the wind, which is not a caveat so much as a permanent condition. There is nothing between Doughmore Bay and Newfoundland. A course that is a pleasant walk on Tuesday morning can be an interrogation by Thursday afternoon, and the forecast will be wrong either way.
McIlroy comes back with the trophy under his arm
Rory McIlroy is the defending champion, and arrives having had the sort of eighteen months that make the record books awkward to update. He completed the career Grand Slam at Augusta, won the Irish Open, took three PGA Tour titles, and finished it off by being crowned Race to Dubai champion for a seventh time — a fourth in succession. There is not a great deal left to say about him that a scoreboard has not already said.
He has also never won a professional tournament in the Republic of Ireland at a venue quite like this one, for the straightforward reason that nobody has. Home advantage at Doonbeg is more theoretical than usual.
A field with proper names in it
Jon Rahm is in, which matters: he has won this championship twice, and his 2017 finish at Portstewart — the eagle at the fourth, the walk up eighteen — is still the clip they lead with. Shane Lowry is in, carrying whatever the Clare galleries decide to hand him, which will be considerable. Pádraig Harrington is in, because Pádraig Harrington is always in.
Luke Donald, the European Ryder Cup captain, will play. So will Tyrrell Hatton, and both Højgaard brothers. In early August the tour added Patrick Reed — the 2018 Masters champion, currently leading the Race to Dubai — along with Robert MacIntyre at World No. 17, Francesco Molinari, the 2018 Open champion now serving as a European vice-captain, and Sepp Straka, No. 26 in the world and the first Austrian to win on the PGA Tour.
"Ireland has such a rich golfing history and the fans always create an incredible atmosphere," Reed said on being confirmed. He is not wrong, and he will find that Clare in September takes the point rather personally.
The prize fund is expected to hold at around $6 million, with a little over $1 million to the winner. That is not the number most people in the dunes will be thinking about.
What this one is for
There is a second competition running that week, and it is a good deal smaller and rather more useful. Golf150.com is hosting a fundraising competition around the Amgen Irish Open in aid of LauraLynn, Ireland's only children's hospice. Entry is €10 with great prizes for using your golfing knowledge to pick the players that will perform in Doonbeg.
The format is the one it always is, and it is harder than it looks. Three golfers. Combined odds of at least 150/1. All three must survive the cut on Friday evening — one of them finds the wrong dune on the sixth and takes a seven, and your team is finished before the weekend starts. You cannot simply take three favourites; the maths will not let you. You have to go looking for value somewhere in a field that includes a Grand Slam winner, two former Irish Open champions, a Ryder Cup captain and a great many players who have never seen this golf course under pressure either.
Which is the appeal. At Doonbeg, for once, everybody is guessing.
Entries open soon. The first ball goes up on Thursday 10 September, into whatever the Atlantic has decided to send.