Royal Portrush's opening hole is a potential card-wrecker

Telegraph

17-07-2025

'Hughie'. It sounds like your pet dog, or your friendly Scottish cousin. It is in fact one of the hardest opening holes on the Open rota. Possibly the hardest, certainly in recent years.
Six years ago, when the championship was last held here at Portrush, Hughie put paid to Rory McIlroy's hopes of home glory within minutes, the Northern Irishman infamously tugging his tee shot left out of bounds, taking an unplayable lie for another penalty stroke, before eventually having to put the dreaded 'snowman' on his scorecard. A quadruple-bogey eight, from which there was no return. McIlroy went on to miss the cut.
For one terrible moment on Thursday, it looked as if McIlroy might repeat the trick. Having waited all day to get his Open under way, and with Wayne 'Radar' Riley having done his best to jinx his opening tee shot by declaring 'I can't see this going left', his tee shot, which he played with an iron to be safe, duly headed out left towards the out-of-bounds area (which to be fair is only a few yards off the fairway). Fortunately his ball stayed in bounds, nestled in the rough. Unfortunately, having managed to find the green with his approach, McIlroy then three-putted for a bogey.
There was a lot of that going around on Hughie on Thursday. In total, there were 45 bogeys from a field of 156. There were also five double-bogeys and one triple, courtesy of the unfortunate Rikuya Hoshino. The Japanese then steadied himself beautifully and played the rest of the round in level par. But that is what Hughie can do to you.
With only 12 birdies on the day, the hole played 4.29 shots on average. If it keeps that up, it will be the hardest opening hole on the Open rota for at least 10 years, which covers all the statistics kept by the R&A on its media website.
The tricky thing about Hughie is not simply the fact that anything left is out of bounds. It is that anything right is, too. Having out of bounds on both sides of the fairway is actually pretty rare. Usually players have a bail-out option, particularly on the first tee of a championship, with heart rate going at 150bpm. But when they tee it up at Portrush, they know they are aiming for a small patch of fairway, no more than 70 yards wide, a good 250 yards away, with a strong breeze more than likely blowing in off the Atlantic, and the dreaded white stakes visible on both sides.
Even if you keep it in bounds, there are a couple of fairway bunkers, nastily positioned, one left, one right, in the 250-300 yard landing zone. And if you avoid those, there is still a tricky uphill approach to an elevated two-tier green with a false front.
'With the boundary on both sides, it can really play on the players' minds when you're stood on the tee,' admits Gary McNeill, Royal Portrush's head professional since 1999. 'There are a couple of fairway bunkers and players tend to play quite conservatively from the tee, which leaves quite a long second shot uphill. The elevation change is quite steep and if you get caught on the wrong portion of that green, it can be quite a difficult two-putt, so I think getting through the first hole unscathed is very important.'
The fact that Hughie tripped up McIlroy so publicly six years ago has only made the test of mettle more difficult. 'Rory has made that first shot a lot scarier,' admitted his fellow Northern Irishman Tom McKibbin after his opening round 72 on Thursday, which included a bogey five on Hughie. 'That's all I could think about for the past three days. I wasn't too nervous, I just didn't want to hit that bad a shot and I was very happy to get under way.'
Padraig Harrington, who hit the first tee shot in the 153rd Open at 6.35am on Thursday, confessed to being terrified. 'It's not a comfortable tee shot for anybody,' he said.
In the end, his opening-hole bogey did not spell doom and gloom for McIlroy on Thursday. The local hero ended up posting a respectable one-under-par 70 to lie three shots off the overnight lead. But Hughie will be waiting to bare its teeth again on Friday.