Royal Portrush: The Course the Open Nearly Forgot for Sixty-Eight Years

Sun, 19 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

For sixty-eight years, Royal Portrush was the Open Championship venue that existed mostly in the imagination of people who had read about it. It hosted the Championship once, in 1951, when Max Faulkner won on a course few outside Ireland had seen and fewer still had played, and then the Open simply stopped coming. Not because Portrush had done anything wrong. The Troubles made Northern Ireland an impossible logistical proposition for decades, and by the time peace made a return conceivable, the R&A had built a rota around courses that had never left it. When the Open finally came back in 2019, Shane Lowry won it in front of the largest crowds outside St Andrews in the Championship’s history, and Royal Portrush went from forgotten to essential in the space of four days.

Dunluce Links on Pin High Press

Royal Portrush: The Course the Open Nearly Forgot for Sixty-Eight Years