Three of golf’s four major championships — the United States Open, the British Open, and the PGA Championship — rotate their sites. The U.S. Open goes to courses with lots of history such as Pebble Beach, the Olympic Club, Pinehurst, Winged Foot and others from the golden age of golf course architecture. Yet the National Open folks have thrown us a few curveballs of late, visiting venues such as Chambers Bay and Erin Hills, both designed in the 21st Century.
The PGA Championship also uses old-time courses such as Baltusrol and Medinah, and yet it also has stuck its neck out and successfully visited Whistling Straits, Hazeltine and Valhalla.
The British Open has had a rigid rotation system. There are nine links-style courses in the rotation, four of them in England and five in Scotland. The Open Championship is contested at St. Andrews, the birthplace of golf, every five years. The other eight courses get an Open sometime within a 10-year period of time.
Earlier in the week, the staid and conservative Royal and Ancient Golf Club, the bluecoats who run the British Open Championship, announced that the championship rotation would be altered a bit in 2019 as Royal Portrush would be the host site of the 148th annual edition of the tournament. Royal Portrush fits the mold as it is also a seaside links course. It is located in Northern Ireland. This will be the second time the Open has visited Royal Portrush as Max Faulkner captured the claret jug there in 1951.
Holding the Open Championship in Northern Ireland is the result of the endless endorsements of the championship merits of Portrush from Irish tour professionals Graeme McDowell, Rory McIlory, Padraig Harrington and especially Darren Clarke. Clarke was quoted as saying, “This is going to be absolutely huge for Northern Ireland and, indeed, Ireland as a whole.” Estimates are that the Open Championship will result in gross revenues in the Portrush area in the neighborhood of 70 million pounds. McIlroy added that “Royal Portrush is one of my favorite golf courses in the world.”
First opened in 1888, Portrush is a 36-hole facility, the Dunluce Links serving as the tournament course. The Valley Links is a good test of golf and two of its holes, the seventh and the eighth, are part of the tournament course configuration. Portrush will play to a par of 72 with its yardage stretched out to 7,337. Its claim to fame when comparing it to other great courses of the British Isles is that it has just 62 bunkers, the least among Open rotation courses. Portrush has also hosted three British Amateurs, the most recent in 2014, and four Irish Opens, the latest one in 2012.
Royal Portrush is Ulster’s top-ranked golf course. It was designed by Harry Colt, a golden age golf course architect who had his hand in close to 300 courses. He worked in conjunction with Alister Mackenzie, most notably at Burning Tree. Colt also collaborated with C.H. Allison on projects such as the Country Club of Detroit and Milwaukee Country Club. Colt was the architect of record for North Shore, the site of the 1933 U.S. Open.
Aside from North Shore, Harry Colt is credited for designing some 115 golf courses on his own. His finest work was accomplished in the British Isles although he also put his name to courses in Asia, Africa and South America. Wentworth and Royal Dublin are both Colt courses and he was the architect who did major revisions on British Open venues Muirfield and Hoylake.
Colt was a pretty good golfer in his own right. He was the captain of his Cambridge University golf team in 1890, finished in a tie for 38th the following year at the Open Championship, and during a two-decade period of time, he was a regular in the British Amateur, recording three quarterfinal finishes as well as a semifinal appearance in 1906. He had some amount of impact upon the game as he was an original member of the Royal and Ancient Rules of Golf committee that was initially founded in 1897.
The Royal and Ancient Golf Club of St. Andrews announced earlier this week that Royal Portrush in Northern Ireland would receive the Open bid for 2019. True, the R&A is adding sites to its championship rotation, but there is nothing new or modern about Portrush. Nonetheless, it’s great to see another great historical course of note serve as a major championship site. After all, Pebble Beach hosted its first U.S. Open in 1972 and Whistling Straits held its first PGA Championship in 2004. During the next handful of years we’ll also get to see such gems as Los Angeles Country Club North (2023 U.S. Open), Bellerive (2018 PGA), and Harding Park in San Francisco (2020 PGA) serve as new old major championship sites.
Finally, the real impact this story presents is in regard to the political climate in Ulster. An Open Championship could not have been played there in the past because of the violence that marred the area. The Open Championship returning to Northern Ireland is a testament to a nation and a people that are currently at peace.
The feel-good story of the week involves Jim and Jason Hurst of Fort Bragg. Jim was the golf coach of Fort Bragg High School in the 1980s and 1990s and his son Jason took on the role of the golf coach of the Timberwolves during the past decade. Upon learning that the perpetual plaques with 22 years of Lake County Junior golf history had been destroyed during the Valley Fire and that the new and used golf ball concession at Adams Springs Golf Course that benefits junior golf had gone up in flames, the Hursts came to the rescue. They sent the Lake County Junior Golf Council checks totaling $1,000 from one of their business interests, the Harbor Lite Lodge, as well as their junior golf fundraising arm, the Timberwolf-Cardinal Foundation.
The perpetual plaques recognize the boys’ and girls’ champions of Lake County Junior. The junior golf balls will be replaced because of the kindness of the Hursts. They have always exuded class in their promotion of junior golf on the Mendocino coast and their kindness and generosity toward youthful golfers in Lake County is greatly appreciated. I’ve always believed that there is a great competitive spirit among the golf teams of the Coastal Mountain Conference, but there are no fierce rivalries. Thank you Jim Hurst and Jason Hurst.
