Local heroes upstaged as Bourdy and Singh set pace

IT was wet, it was windy, but nothing was going to stop fans turning out in huge numbers yesterday for the first Irish Open in Northern Ireland since 1953.

Rory McIlroy, Darren Clarke and Graeme McDowell, the three major champions whose success helped to bring the event back across the border, were always going to have the biggest galleries lining the fairways.

But, while none of them was able to break 70, Indian Jeev Milkha Singh and France’s Gregory Bourdy were certainly not complaining about the number following them as they set the pace – either side of a 95-minute storm delay – with seven-under- par 65s.

“The atmosphere and the feel to the golf course is fantastic,” said the 40-year-old. “When you have so many people cheering and watching you I think you feel great.”

It is the first time organisers have put the “sold out” signs up for a regular European Tour event, with 27,000 tickets purchased for each day’s play.

First Minister Peter Robinson and Deputy Martin McGuinness, fresh from his historic handshake with The Queen a day earlier, were also in attendance to witness scenes that might one year soon be repeated at an Open Championship.

McDowell was the first of the three local heroes into action, but hitting a pitch into bushes for a double-bogey 7 on the 581-yard 17th – his eighth – took the wind out of his sails and he had to settle for a one under 71.

Clarke, yet to make his first halfway cut of the year and out for the past month with a groin strain, contented himself with matching that after a hat-trick of bogeys had left him two over after eight. World No 2 McIlroy, meanwhile, reached four under, but three-putted the 16th and 18th in what he called “a sloppy finish” and signed for a 70 as he was watched by girlfriend Caroline Wozniacki after her early exit from Wimbledon.

Before the tournament Clarke had presented Singh with a bottle of 21-year-old Bushmills single malt whisky but he is keeping that until he can share it with his father Milkha – the “Flying Sikh” who lost out on an Olympic 400 metres medal in a photo-finish in 1960 and about whom a film is currently being made.

Singh, whose own dream is to represent India on the sport’s return to the Games in 2016, is a real lover of links golf. Not that anybody who witnessed his first experience of it would have guessed that – as a 16-year-old in 1988 he competed in the Amateur Championship at Royal Porthcawl in Wales but had rounds of 87 and 84 there and at Pyle and Kenfig to miss out on the matchplay stages.

“I thought ‘My God, this is tough’. I wasn’t used to wearing raingear.” He has got used to that now – and clearly improved.

Dubliner Padraig Harrington, playing with McDowell and equally thrilled at seeing the tournament come north, pitched in from around 60 yards for birdie on his penultimate hole and, with a 67, is firmly in the hunt.

So, too, is Fifer Peter Whiteford after he matched that effort on a day when Paul Lawrie and Ryder Cup captain Jose Maria Olazabal – playing together for the third time in under two months – both shot 69.

Three days after winning the Open Championship qualifier at Sunningdale, England’s James Morrison had something else to celebrate – a hole-in-one on the 14th known as “Calamity Corner” earned him a BMW 6 Series Gran Coupe.