The Open Championship is just days away from getting underway at Royal Portrush and one man who knows a thing or two about the famous course is former Open champion, Darren Clarke.
The popular Northern Irishman won one of the most memorable Opens of recent times when he got an emotional victory at Royal St Georges back in 2011.
Clarke will once again tee it up at a course he calls home and if he can somehow replicate that 2011 win, it would be the mother of all golf stories.
Despite his advancing years, Clarke will have a raucous home crowd behind him and crucially, he has the course knowledge few in the field will have.
Indeed, it seems Clarke has been playing Portrush in recent days and he’s told the media ahead of tee off just what we can expect.
Darren Clarke reveals how Royal Portrush is playing ahead of The Open
Deep down inside, Clarke will know his chances of winning are slim to none given the talent in the field but he’ll still go out and give things a good go.
With his course knowledge, he’ll probably save at least a few shots per round against the field if he can knit the rest of his game together as well.
And after playing the course just last week, Clarke has explained what sort of test the players could be in for.
“Portrush is a very fair links. Some links courses we go and play you can get very strange bounces on fairways and stuff. This one does not. If you play well you. You have to drive the ball well around Royal Portrush. I would liken it to Royal Birkdale in that usually if you hit a good tee shot it will stay on the fairway,” Clarke told the press today.
“It’s a fair test. There is no straight out and straight backs in. This moves everywhere. There are dogleg lefts and right, uphill, downhill, there are quite a lot of elevation changes here so a lot of the greens are an elevated set up. It’s a wonderful, wonderful Harry Colt design.
“If you do hit it in the rubbish nearly every hole Harry Colt has given you a way that if you need to hack the ball out there’s always a way that you can feed the ball into the green here, which is very clever.
It’s green right now at the moment and I know they would like it a bit more brown and fiery, but because of the rain that has been difficult.
“With that being said over the weekend, with it being so hot, the greens have firmed up massively. I played it a bit last week and the ball was stopping on the greens, this past weekend it has not been. It just depends how much rain we get now over the next three days.”
Darren Clarke’s Open win is one of the all-time greats
Every so often, a golf tournament captures the hearts of everyone and it doesn’t matter who you were supporting originally, you end up rooting for the eventual winner.
Darren Clarke’s Open win in 2011 is exactly one of those moments and goes down as one of the most emotional wins in sport.
After losing his wife in heart breaking fashion to cancer in 2006, Clarke fought back the tears to win at Royal St George’s and etch his name into golfing history.
Since then, while we’ve seen some huge moments around the world, nothing has come close to capturing or displaying the sheer raw emotion of a win like Clarke’s did.
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