PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — Darren Clarke, the 2011 British Open champion who grew up about an hour from Portrush and now has a home in the seaside village, will strike the first tee shot in Thursday’s opening round of the Open Championship.
Clarke is paired with Charley Hoffman and Irish amateur James Sugrue in the 6:35 a.m. opening grouping.
“It’s going to be amazing,’’ Clarke said Monday after the pairings were released. “Thursday morning is going to be exciting. I just hope I manage to get one going straight down the fairway.’’
Clarke said Martin Slumbers, the executive director of the R&A, which runs the Open, “asked me about three weeks ago [if] I would do them the honor of hitting the opening tee shot.
“It’s Royal Portrush and when the R&A asks you, it’s a definite yes. I said, ‘I’d love it.’ It’s Royal Portrush. It’s the first time we’ve been here since 1951, and he asked me to do it and I happily accept. Will there be tears? No. I’ll just be very proud that we have it back here in Northern Ireland.’’
As for his own chances, Clarke, 50, is playing most of his golf on the Champions Tour and it’s difficult to imagine him contending — home course or not. One thing he will have, though, is heavy local support.
“If you’re playing well, having all that support and stuff is wonderful,’’ Clarke said. “If you’re not playing so well, then you’re maybe trying too hard because the crowd wanted you to play well. That’s part of it. It’s always been the same when the Irish guys are playing at home in the Irish Open. Obviously here, this is even bigger. This is the biggest and best tournament in the world.
“So part of dealing with your own expectations is part of the whole thing. But I’m determined this week to enjoy it the best I can. Whether I play well or don’t play well, it’s a huge thing for all the Irish golfers, for Northern Ireland, for me, that lives here a little bit, to have the Open Championship here.’’
Clarke recalled nearly being a victim of “the troubles’’ in Northern Ireland back in the ’80s when a bomb had been set off in a bar he was working in.
“It was a job that I had setting up a bar and there was a bomb behind it; we got a bomb scare,’’ he said. “I was in there from 6 o’clock and the club opened at 8:30. I’d been setting up one of the bars. The bomb scare was at 8:30, everybody out, and the bomb went off at 9 and the place was flattened.
“That was life in Northern Ireland. Bombs were going off quite frequently, and a lot of people, unfortunately, paid a heavy penalty for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. But that was our life back there at that stage.
“You think about at that stage when everything that was going on whether we were ever going to have a tournament such as this. It was beyond the realms of possibility. It was just never going to happen. So to get to the point where you guys are all sitting here doing this has been an incredible journey for what we’ve all come through.’’
