Rory reset and ready to roll at home

McIlroy: 'I want to win this golf tournament, and I feel like I’m very capable of doing that.'

Native Northern Irishman Rory McIlroy feels more at home this time (Oisin Keniry/R&A via Getty Images)

PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — The Rory McIlroy of six years ago is a stunning contrast to the McIlroy of today.

Sitting in the first press conference of the 153rd Open Championship, McIlroy seemed to have finally settled into his newfound celebrity after an emotional Masters playoff win.

This week, the 36-year-old from down the road in Holywood returns home to a country where his fame is unparalleled and his approach to it has been to adjust by embracing the adulation, as opposed to six years ago when he was a bit more of an isolationist ahead of ultimately missing the cut in the 2019 Open at Royal Portrush.

Coming home to Northern Ireland in 2019, McIlroy talked about his initial experience with Royal Portrush, which started when his father, Gerry, was playing in the North of Ireland championship and a 7- or 8-year-old Rory was practicing on the putting green as his father was competing.

Oddly, in his pre-tournament press conference in 2019, McIlroy explained that his friend and caddie Harry Diamond had much more experience around the Dunluce Links at Royal Portrush than the then-four-time major winner.

Six years later, McIlroy comes back with a green jacket in his closet, a career Grand Slam on his résumé and a blanket of accomplishment as he looks ahead to this week at the Open and September’s defense of Europe’s Ryder Cup at Bethpage Black.

“I’m certainly encouraged by how I’ve played the last two starts, especially last week in Scotland,” McIlroy said after his runner-up finish at the Genesis Scottish Open. “I think the two weeks off after the Travelers — just to reset, to get over here, a bit of a change of scenery — has been really nice.”

Circling the date, McIlroy spoke of looking at this week’s major even more so than his annual pilgrimage to Augusta, but for different reasons.

Those reasons were that he was returning home.

“To be here, to see a lot of familiar faces … every hole on the course has a different team of marshals from different golf clubs, and just to see people that I’ve met throughout the years out there this morning was really nice,” McIlroy said.

Rory McIlroy spoke Monday ahead of the 153rd Open (Oisin Keniry/R&A via Getty Images)

When McIlroy first talked about his future focus on golf with his green jacket sitting on his shoulders, the newly minted Masters champion was relieved. Many thought that relief would spark a second growth spurt towards winning more majors in succession.

But being a Masters champion turned into more of a capstone accomplishment as he toiled in the last two majors in relative pedestrian fashion — a T47 in the PGA Championship at Quail hollow and a backdoor T19 at the U.S. Open at Oakmont.

But with a tied for sixth at Travelers and runner-up last week at the Scottish, the Dunluce Links may be where McIlroy is finally ready to cash in on the Masters largess releasing him from his burdens on the big stages.

“I’ve alluded to this, but I probably just didn’t give myself enough time to let it all sink in, but that’s the nature of professional golf,” McIlroy said. “They do a very good job of keeping you on the hamster wheel, and you feel like it’s hard to get off at times.”

Yet, McIlroy recognizes that the accomplishments of 2025 have made the year already fantastic.

“I want to do my best this week to enjoy everything that comes my way and enjoy the reaction of the fans and enjoy being in front of them and playing in front of them,” McIlroy said. “But at the same time, I want to win this golf tournament, and I feel like I’m very capable of doing that.”

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Shane Lowry still can’t explain the magic he conjured in 2019 at Royal Portrush (Oisin Keniry/R&A via Getty Images)

Lowry hopes to have ‘fun’ in Portrush defense

Six years since Shane Lowry hoisted the Claret Jug after winning the 2019 Open in a Sunday slog at Royal Portrush, and he’s still getting asked about his Irish celebration.

“Interesting first question, isn’t it?” Lowry said Monday in his opening Open presser. “Here to talk about golf and all anyone wants to talk about is drinking. Yeah, I celebrated pretty well. Golf is a funny game like where you lose a lot more than you win, and I’ve always been a firm believer that when you win, you need to try and celebrate those victories. So I did that that night.”

McIlroy admitted his still trying to learn from his Irish mate about how to balance golf and life: “I think Shane is very good at having fun, and I need more of that in my life.”

Lowry, now 38, hasn’t added to his major haul since his breakthrough on home ground in Ireland. But he’s certainly been kicking at the door. He shot 62 at Valhalla in the third round of the 2024 PGA Championship to put himself in contention, held the 36-hole lead in last year’s Open at Royal Troon and was in the hunt at the 2025 Masters in April before a Sunday collapse.

Will returning to Portrush and the scene of his greatest professional success push him over the line again?

“Obviously I know that’s quite a while ago, and no matter what I done then, it doesn’t give me any God-given right to do anything special this week,” Lowry said. “I just need to get my head down on Thursday morning and get after it and see what happens.”

Still, he can feel the energy in the Northern Irish town that has embraced his victory so much it painted a mural of him on the main street through town and past the course.

“Yeah, it’s amazing to be back. It\’s pretty cool that we’re back so quickly after such a short period of time,” he said. “We’ve only had five Opens since the last Open here in Portrush, which just goes to show what the R&A and the organizers think of this venue.

“Obviously I’m a little bit biased, but I think it’s one of the best venues, and you look at it in this weather, and I think it’s just incredible. The golf course, I played it this morning, I think it’s perfect right now. I think it’s ready for a great week of golf. …

“Look, I’m there and … obviously there’s a lot of memories and there’s a lot of thinking back to what I did. What I did was very special, and to walk down the 18th hole with a six-shot lead, I’m probably never going to do that again so I’m not going to try and replicate that this week. I’m just going to go out and try and play the tournament as well as I can this week. I’ve prepared as well as I can for this tournament. I know I have. …

“I feel like I’m a better golfer than I was in 2019. I am a better golfer than I was in 2019. But it doesn’t mean I’m going to go out and win by seven this year instead of six. It’s just golf; that’s the way it is.”

McIlroy spoke of how much pressure he put on himself as the local hero playing on home turf in 2019 and how it all unraveled on his first drive out of bounds. Lowry understands the pressure better than anyone else.

“Yeah, I reckon that first tee that morning in 2019 was the most nervous I’ve ever been on the first tee of a tournament. All you want to do is get the ball down the fairway, and obviously Rory didn’t do that,” he said.

“I remember talking to him a little bit in the lead-up to that, and he did put a lot of pressure on himself, talking about it being the biggest tournament he’s ever going to play and stuff like that. You live and you learn, and I’m sure he’s not going to do that this week.

“Look, it is a big event for all us Irish people here this week. It’s huge. We are going out and all we want to do is give ourselves a chance come the weekend, and if you give yourself a chance, you never know what could happen if you do something very special. Yeah, we’ve talked about it at the odd time but not that much. He doesn’t want to talk about what he did on the first hole. I don’t mind talking about what I did, but no, not that much.”

While McIlroy and much of the Open field prepared themselves for the week by competing in the Scottish Open, Lowry took a completely different approach and skipped the Genesis to get himself ready in his homeland.

“In the last two weeks I’ve played Portmarnock, The Island, Baltray, Waterville, Hogs Head and Adare Manor,” Lowry said. “So I’ve played some of the best courses we have in the country.

“I feel fortunate that I have that on — not on my doorstep, but I can go do that pretty easily. I’ve only played Scotland once in the last eight or 10 years, and then I went to Hoylake and missed the cut. That didn’t work out well.

“I went and I parked myself down in Waterville last week, and I spent the week down there. I played golf every day, played a lot of golf. The weather was almost too good, that was the issue. There wasn’t enough wind. The sun was shining too much and it was too warm. But it’s been an amazing couple of weeks.”

Will it translate into repeated success? Lowry wishes he knew the answer to that.

“I’ve spent the last six years trying to figure that out,” he said about how everything clicked into perfect place for him last time in a magical week.

“I’d been playing pretty solid, like really good golf the whole year. Then I came to a place that I knew and I loved, and it just all clicked. I was playing some of the best golf of my life.

“Even some people said it to me this week, a couple of people that are close to me, in walking practice rounds that week in 2019, they sort of knew that I was playing really well and that I was ready for it. I said, I wish you’d have told me because I remember that week I was quite antsy and quite uptight about the whole thing, but that’s just because you want to perform so well, or so much.

“I still don’t know why. You never really know why. … There’s no real answer. It just happened. I’m very lucky. I always count myself quite lucky. I’ve always done well. I’ve achieved some good things in my career. But some of the big things I’ve achieved in my career has been pretty nice. I always say no matter what happens, I’ll always have, like even Baltray in 2009 [Irish Open win as an amateur at County Lough] was very special, and here in 2019 was something special that no one will ever be able to take away from me.”