The other day someone asked me how many Opens I’d been at and, not being a numbers bod, I hadn’t a clue.  Quite a few is the answer and it is still, I think, my favourite championship.  The world and her husband are here at Royal Birkdale and if you stand still for long enough, you’re likely to bump into almost everybody you’ve ever known in golf:  from Ireland, Japan, America, Sweden, Spain, Australia, wherever, you name it.  It’s wonderful.

Two of Ireland’s finest:  the Bamfords ready to roll.

Even on Tuesday the train to Hillside was full of golf fans, male, female, young, not so young and the buzz and excitement were palpable.  We streamed into Birkdale and big bruiser of a course though it is, with space to spare, we still stood out.  We were absorbed easily but not swallowed up.  Just another golf tournament?  I don’t think so.

I had a front row seat in the grandstand in 1998 when Justin Rose, a talented, gangly teenager in a baggy jumper, holed out from the rough at the 72nd hole, to give notice of his taste for the big occasion.  There was pandemonium but it was Mark O’Meara, aided, if memory serves, by a lengthy, officially sanctioned search for a missing ball, who won the title.  His reward this year was to open the proceedings at 0635 on a pretty filthy morning.  I confess I wasn’t there to see the start but perhaps I’ll make it this morning, when Beef is first off….

With the ever affable Beef at Portstewart.

Dai died in May 2008, so Birkdale was the first Open I attended without him and it was a bit of an odd, bittersweet experience, albeit quieter than normal, with no husband to demand why I wasn’t getting a (blank) move on.  The traditional Open ice cream didn’t taste quite the same that year.  However, Greg Norman’s blast-from-the-past performance enlivened the proceedings, as did the presence of Chris Evert, who was, briefly, Mrs Norman.  Ian Poulter also got in on the act in fighting style but it was Padraig Harrington, always one of my favourites, who retained the claret jug he’d snaffled at Carnoustie the year before.

Padraig, whose endlessly inventive thought processes are probably a mystery even to himself, went on to win the USPGA later that year and I didn’t see a shot of his final round.  Assuming that he was too far adrift to have any chance, I went to bed and woke up to hear on the news that the delightfully doolally Dubliner had become a major miracle worker.  It taught me never, ever, to take anything in golf for granted and it should be an object lesson to every player, at whatever level, to keep on plugging away, whatever the conditions, however hopeless things look, until the holes run out.

Birkdale looking idyllic but still too tough for some.

Even here at Birkdale, watching the best players in the world, it’s amazing how dire some of the body language can be, how quickly players of immense talent seem to be floored by the slightest setback, ready to slump after a missed putt or a misjudged pitch and responding sarkily or swearing sulkily if a shot goes awry.  We all have days when we’re out of sorts but being a professional is surely all about damage limitation when the timing is out of sync or the biorhythms have gone walkabout.  It’s often a question of mind over matter.

Ask any Open champion.

My heart is bursting!  “What with?” you may ask.  The answer is with pride.  PRIDE.  Nothing more, nothing less.  My home town, my home course, Portstewart Golf Club, where I’ve been a member all my life, is the venue for this week’s Dubai Duty Free Irish Open hosted by The Rory Foundation.  The place I’ve played thousands and thousands of rounds with friends and family, the place I’ve hit millions of practice shots, the place I’ve dreamed my dreams, is front and centre stage of European golf for a week.  I so wish Mum and Dad were here to see it.

The week started on Tuesday with an invitation from the matchless Barry Funston, the big shaker and mover of The Rory Foundation to an evening with Rory, James Nesbitt and Pep Guardiola.  Heaven!  Forgive my exuberance, but when you’ve had a lovely, golf-imbued life as I have…and then met oodles of these players….and then they come to your own stomping ground!  Well!  You can just imagine!

The incomparable Michael Moss, the recently retired secretary manager of the club, but the current, very busy, tournament guru, is working every hour imaginable with panache, humour and efficiency.  His successor as secy/manager is Judy Hutton and she has certainly hit the ground running, supported by the collective golfing community along this north coast.  It’s a true community effort. But perhaps the true, largely unsung, hero is Bernard Findlay, the man entrusted with preparing the links for the world’s great players. He and his team have truly delivered, so limitless congratulations to them all.

Patricia and I have been lucky enough to travel the world with this sport and this week it’s like having all your best mates from the players, caddies, media and managerial side all gathered together alongside your other mates and family who couldn’t break 100 if you gave them lessons from now to Domesday.  That takes a bit of getting your head around!  But it’s delicious!  Forgive me for the paucity of words this week, but as they say say, a picture says a thousand words, so here are a few of my favourites from the first two days.

Who would have believed it?  The stuff of dreams!

Welcoming Miguel Angel Jimenez to MY putting green!

With Alastair Scott, official starter for the European Tour.

Sorting out the world’s problems with Jack Buchanan (left), president of Surrey golf and our pal Peter Alliss.

Local member, and cousin, Patrick Breadon, with 2010 US Open champ, Graeme McDowell.

Patricia and Beef.

With one of my favourites, Mark Fulcher, gold medal winning caddy to Justin Rose.

Starry, starry-eyed Patricia with her long-time hero Pat Jennings, who made his debut in goal for Northern Ireland in 1964 alongside a guy called George Best.

The beautiful Portstewart lay out.

How will we ever return to normal?

For the second week in a row I feel completely redundant.  Maureen had, as usual, got her blog in first, I read it and thought: can’t do better than that, she’s said all I wanted to say, with passion, panache and photos.  Time to put the wine away and go to bed.

None of us has ever seen Portstewart the way it is this week.  No cars on the beach for a start, unheard of in the summer but a real bonus for the photographers, with the sand at its most pristine.  You have to drive past the golf club to get to the beach and this week, with the European Tour at its biggest and best in town, you probably have to be Rory McIlroy to drive onto the sand – or a policeman on a quad bike.  I’d have taken a photo but he’d zoomed off before I could press the requisite buttons.  Too slow on the uptake as usual, which is not such a problem for us scribblers who can arrive late on the scene and still catch up.

Portstewart strand at its most pristine

Mind you, it’s still nice to be on the scene, if only to try and puzzle out later what on earth was happening before your very eyes.  I tootled round the first nine after a leisurely breakfast of seafood chowder and wheaten bread by the world’s best 1st tee and realised again just how beautiful the place is.  Did we really grow up here?  How lucky were we?  Aren’t all golf courses like this?  And Portrush?  And Castlerock?  The short answer is no.  Not only are our home courses some of the best in Ireland, they’re some of the best in the whole wide world.  So why shouldn’t Justin Rose, the Olympic champion, be striding down the hill at the 1st?  Or Hideki Matsuyama, who must surely become the first Japanese to win a major and open the floodgates?  Or the latest explosive Spanish talent that is Jon Rahm?

All the fun of a big event

Chema, Jose Maria Olazabal, twice Masters champion, one of my favourites, is here and I’m ridiculously delighted to think of him, the man from Fuenterrabia, at Portstewart.  Wee places that can launch people out in to the wider world.  The place is littered with them this week:  wee boys – and girls – who had big dreams and discovered they really could take on the world.  Some go on on to believe their own publicity and think they’re better than they are but a goodly number remain grounded and, mostly, level-headed whatever the adulation  and remember that they’re human.  They’re the ones who are loved and respected, faults, foibles and all.

“Rory’s a bit grumpy this week,” someone who failed to get an autograph said, before adding, “Beef has time for everyone.”  Yeah, but.  Beef (sometimes aka Andrew Johnston) is not hosting the event on his (more or less give or take a few miles) home turf, trying to be all-singing, all-dancing, all-things-to-all-men-and women as well as all-swinging.  He only has to concentrate on his golf – and selfies with one and all, including fellow beardies.  Rory, the defending Irish Open champion, is donating his prize money this week to the Rory Foundation and he’d really rather like to make the cut.  As it is, he’s lightly golfed this season and his practice time is limited by the nature of the week. Even for a young, fit human dynamo, something’s got to give and if he had any sense, he should just check out Mo’s “Drive Up, Drive Off Sandra” tip and forget about the practice ground altogether, though that goes against the professional grain.

Of course, he could also read Be A Player, Pia Nilsson and Lynn Marriott’s latest book, as insightful, thought-provoking and full of good sense as ever.  Or, even quicker, he could talk to Jude O’Reilly, Ireland’s answer to Pia and Lynn.  If you’ve dug enough dirt and made the hands bleed enough, making the mind work better is the final frontier.

Mention of the mind brings me to Padraig Harrington, who has his own unique way of thinking and is warming up for Birkdale, where he won the Open so magnificently in 2008.  I was on the spot yesterday when Padraig launched his drive at the 7th (his 16th) well left into thick, tangly, inhospitable rough.  He took a drop, hammered his recovery well up the fairway and narrowly missed his putt.  Wonder what that added up to, I thought.  Nothing more than a par 5 according to the scoreboard.  Huh?

I bumped into Caroline Harrington at the next hole and she explained that it was a free drop because the ball was plugged.  Not only that but the spectators, being helpful, had picked up the ball to identify it and then diligently stuffed it back into the rubbish to try and ensure that it was lying as it had been.  So there is such a thing as the luck of the Irish!  And nothing like being there to see it.

Something on this week?

Last weekend I was anxious to see if Ireland’s Leona Maguire, world amateur No 1, had managed to win the Ladies’ British Amateur Championship which was being played at Pyle & Kenfig Golf Club in Wales.  So I turned to the ever reliable irishgolfdesk.com and Brian Keogh to find out, (the R&A website had frustrated me all week), and there it was – a victory by 3 and 2 in the final against Spain’s Ainhoa Olarra.

Just what I wanted to read, but one other fact mentioned in Keogh’s opening sentence stopped me in my tracks.  Leona had become the eighth Irishwoman to win the title.  Eighth?  Was that all – in 114 playings of the championship?  Indeed it was.  The first two winners were Portrush based – May Hezlet triumphing in 1899, 1902 and 1907 and Rhona Adair in 1900 and 1903. The fifties brought two Irish victories – Tullamore’s Kitty McCann in 1951 and her great rival, Philomena Garvey, who swept all before her in 1957.  Both were incredible golfers but Phil’s legacy goes well beyond her prowess on the course for it was in 1958 that she withdrew from the Curtis Cup side because the Union Jack was the only flag on the team blazer.  Nary sight nor sign of an Irish tricolour, so Phil downed clubs and told them to get it sorted.  And they did!  To this day the Union Jack and Irish flags figure jointly on the Great Britain and Ireland international blazers.  It was quite a stand to make at the time and a proud moment for Irish golf.

Sandwiched by two of Ireland’s greats – Phil Garvey (left) and Kitty McCann

That brings us to Yours Truly, the next Irish winner in 1979.  So many things remain etched in my memory from that unforgettable week.  The absolute downpour that drenched the course in the second qualifying round; being 3 down after 8 holes in my opening match; getting the better of the English champion in my second match; beating my great pal and legendary player Mary McKenna on the final green in the semis and then bursting into tears because I was sorry she’d lost; and then hearing my final opponent ungraciously saying that any decent championship should have a 36-hole final – this after I’d beaten her on the 17th of our 18-hole final!  Sore loser, or what?

A treasured programme

My caddy was a great fan of Arnold Palmer, so was known to his friends as Arnie and he helped us load the huge trophy in its own special box into the car for the journey back to Portstewart.  Nowadays the winners do not get to keep the trophy for the year but we had the pleasure of having it, firstly, at home and then in the golf club where it was lovingly polished and kept looking pristine by Bridget.

No texting or emails in those days!

On that memorable journey home from Nairn Mum and I, along with Molly, a great family friend, drove down to Troon to stay overnight before catching the ferry to Larne from Stranraer the next day.  We lugged the huge box up the stairs to my room and put it at the bottom of the bed.  After a hearty dinner we all fell into bed exhausted but I woke early and lay there for a while looking at the unfamiliar surroundings.  “Gosh, I dreamt I’d won the British,” I thought to myself.  I sat up, leaning on one elbow, and saw the big box at the end of the bed.  I stared at it for a few moments and then bounded out of  bed to touch the box.  It was amazing – it WASN’T a dream.  I couldn’t believe it!  From there it was back to Portstewart Golf Club for a huge impromptu party and shortly afterwards another big shindig at my other club, Portrush.  One thing about the Irish – they know how to celebrate and have a party and their generosity of spirit is legendary.  It’s only now, looking back across the decades, that I can begin to appreciate the pleasure my win gave to so many people – and that’s humbling.

Ending a 22 year drought for Ireland.

Seven years on and in 1986 the incomparable ball striker that was the Royal Curragh’s Lillian Behan lifted the cup at Ganton.  It then took until 2012 before Stephanie Meadow conquered all at Carnoustie and she is now making her way on the professional tours in the States.  I expect great things of her.  And now it’s Leona Maguire, all conquering US collegiate player, hooverer-up of endless titles, and at last the big one.  For these last two players I don’t expect this title to be their greatest accomplishment in the game, but I trust they will come to have a little bit of the sense of the history of the group they have joined.

The new British Champion with Mum, Breda.

I’ve just realised with a jolt that I am the oldest living Irish winner of this title!  Help!  That photo of me with Kitty and Phil is one of my greatest treasures.  I am proud to have a connection with them.  Time, I think, to sort out a pic with Lillian, Stephanie and Leona.  I’d be proud to be in that photo too.