Homegrown hero Rory McIlroy has revealed his mantra for this week’s Open assault at Royal Portrush: “Look around and smell the roses.”
The World No3, born in County Down but a longtime fan of the Dunluce Links on Northern Ireland’s North Coast, is relishing the championship’s return to these shores.
And McIlroy has vowed to soak up a special atmosphere and use the partisan backing of an army of Irish golf fans as positive energy for the week.
The R&A has confirmed this week’s 237,750 attendance at Portrush is the second highest in Open history, bettered only by St Andrews in 2000.
The last time the championship was staged outside Scotland and England was in 1951 when Max Faulkner lifted the Claret Jug at Royal Portrush.
“One of my mantras this week is ‘look around and smell the roses’,” said McIlroy. “It’s sort of surreal that The Open Championship is here, but it is really cool.
“This is a wonderful thing for this country and golf in general and to be quite a big part of it is an honour and a privilege.
“I want to keep reminding myself of that, that this is bigger than me; right? This is bigger than me. I think if you can look at the bigger picture, it takes a little bit of the pressure off.
“I still want to play well and concentrate and do all the right things, but at the same time just having that perspective might just make me relax a little bit more.”
McIlroy, born near the tail-end of the Troubles in 1989, was sheltered from the ferocity of the sectarian conflict that blighted Northern Ireland’s landscape in the 1970s and 1980s.
And he hopes a positive lasting legacy of The Open’s return to Royal Portrush for the first time in 68 years is sport’s “unbelievable ability to bring people together”.
“We all know this country sometimes needs that and this has the ability to do that,” he said.
“Talking of legacy, that could be the biggest impact this tournament has outside of sport, outside of everything else, people coming here to have a good time and sort of forget everything else that goes on.”
Reflecting on the journey Northern Ireland has made since the end of the Troubles in the early-90s, McIlroy said: “I'm very fortunate that I grew up just outside Belfast and was oblivious to it.
“I remember I watched a movie a couple of years ago.. it was called "'71” and it's about a British soldier that gets stationed at the Palace Barracks in Holywood, which is literally 500 yards from where I grew up.
“It follows him on the night of the Troubles and all that. And I remember asking my mom and dad, is this actually what happened?
“It's amazing to think 40 years on it's such a great place. To be able to have this tournament here again, I think it speaks volumes of where the country and where the people that live here are now.
“We're so far past that and that's a wonderful thing. It’s a different time and a very prosperous place.”
McIlroy, an 8/1 favourite with the bookies, tees off his first round at 10.09am on Monday morning alongside Gary Woodland and Paul Casey.
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