PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — For a moment, all you could hear were the seagulls.
Rory McIlroy addressed the ball, shuffled his feet and took one last look towards the hole. The thousands gathered behind the 15th held their breath. He’d hit his wedge-shot approach in close to the back-right pin, which meant from the grandstand he was framed against one of the linksland’s most epic views: Royal Portrush’s front nine. The 7th and its sprawling dunescape. The 5th and its expansive beach view. The towering white cliffs. The ruins of the medieval Dunluce Castle beyond them.
Two hours before, tens of thousands of fans had filled those front-nine hillsides, testing the ropelines as they strained for a look at McIlroy in the arena — their arena — and willed on a Sunday comeback. Now the crowd had been compressed to the final four holes; the other holes were empty save for a squawking flock of seagulls, reclaiming familiar territory. Every Open is epic but fleeting. The course outlasts the tournament, and the seagulls outlast both.
McIlroy swung his putter back and through and sent his birdie putt racing towards the hole. Thirteen feet later it fell into the middle of the cup and a roar went up from the grandstand behind the green. McIlroy had no chance to win — any hope for a miracle had been squashed beneath a double bogey at No. 10 — but there was an urgency to their applause. This Open’s favorite son was nearing his finish. The opportunities to roar were running out.
IT WAS ALWAYS GOING TO BE A COMPLEX WEEK for Rory McIlroy. Not because of the intricacies of his national identity — though there are those — but because there’s no golfer more ardently embraced by his home event than McIlroy at a Northern Irish Open. This was just the event’s second return in 70 years to Portrush, a peninsular seaside town on the island’s rugged northern tip. And so the week mattered desperately from the outset. It mattered because McIlroy is from a small golf club in this small, golf-mad country. It mattered because he has become a big deal in a bigger, golf-mad country. It mattered because he has a new green jacket. And it mattered because coming home is always emotional — especially when you’re not home to stay.
“It’s just great to be back. I don’t spend a lot of time in these parts anymore,” he said wistfully in his pre-tournament press conference. In the lead-up to this year’s event, several media outlets (most notably ours!) visited Holywood, McIlroy’s home club, just an hour down the road. He still has the same coach, Michael Bannon, that he did as a Holywood kid. And he’s given back to the club, donating a state-of-the-art gym as part of a new practice facility. But his last trip ’round the course?
“I haven’t played Holywood in 15 years, maybe,” he said.
If you read about the tournament or watched McIlroy on TV coverage you were likely reminded at some point about McIlroy’s last tournament at Portrush in 2019, the Open’s first venture outside Great Britain since 1951. He arrived on site as the sentimental favorite and the betting favorite — and under more pressure than he even realized.
“I remember the ovation I got on the first tee on Thursday and not being prepared for it, or not being ready for how I was going to feel,” he said ahead of this week’s event, looking back. McIlroy was struck with a sudden realization. “Geez, these people really want me to win,” he recalls. “I think that brought its own sort of pressure, more internally from myself, not really wanting to let people down.”
He hooked his opening tee shot out-of-bounds and opened with 79. But it was the second round that stuck with him.
“I remember the run on Friday,” he said. “I remember I was making a charge to make the cut and I hit a 6-iron into the 14th, and I remember the roar from the crowd. It was getting a little dark and it was overcast, and for whatever reason I remember that shot and that roar, and walking up to that green and getting a standing ovation — it was really special.”
McIlroy finished off a second-round 65 that day but missed the cut by a single shot. Post-round he broke down in an emotional post-round interview, admitting he’d been overwhelmed by the support, even in defeat. It was a striking moment that delivered in two ways we crave when we watch sports: it was unexpected and it was real. And it made this year’s return to Portrush that much more compelling, knowing how much each side wanted another, better go.
When McIlroy won this year’s Masters it changed everything, including his homecoming. In some ways it lessened the pressure — his dream fulfilled, his major drought broken — but it certainly didn’t lessen the spectacle. A coffee shop in town renamed itself to Rory and Bert’s. An ice cream shop made an mural of McIlroy’s face in sprinkles. Fans flooded to town, with tickets to Royal Portrush selling out almost immediately, to the tune of more than 200,000 tickets, and their holders showed up early, eager to see the sequel.
McIlroy’s Masters win hadn’t solved everything, of course. It answered questions asked new ones, too, and he admitted he spent the ensuing weeks and months searching for what was next. He didn’t contend at the PGA or U.S. Open, he had several awkward standoffs with the media and seemed generally out of sorts. It was the right time, he said, for a trip home.
“When I was looking at the calendar for 2025, this was the tournament that was probably, I don’t know, circled even more so than the Masters, for different reasons,” he said. “A bit of a change of scenery has been really nice.”
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ON MCILROY’S FINAL FEW HOLES, there were moments that mattered. At No. 16, the course’s signature, devilish par-3, he escaped with a curling par putt that sent the crowded hillside into joyous applause. At No. 17 he executed a masterful short-sided up-and-down from a greenside bunker, and after he’d holed his par putt he waited for one minute, then two, then three, as his caddie Harry Diamond finished a fastidious rake job, so that the two sons of Northern Ireland could walk to the final hole together. And after a tidy chip from long of the 18th green, McIlroy marked his two-footer for par and let playing partner Matthew Fitzpatrick finish out first. (“I’ve heard enough ‘Rorys’ to last me a lifetime,” Fitzpatrick joked post-round. “No, he’s fantastic. He’s such a great guy, and in an environment like that where he’s obviously trying arguably more than everyone else to win, to just have the class that he has is awesome.”) He savored the moment and the past-capacity bleachers did, too, and they cheered as he holed that final putt and removed his cap and turned and waved in each direction, lingering a final few seconds before he disappeared into the tunnel. He’d finished T7, seven shots off Scheffler’s winning score. Any other week that would have been frustrating and disappointing. This week it seemed like a win. And a relief.
McIlroy has had plenty of teary post-major moments in recent years, but this wasn’t one of them. He took a moment to compose himself en route to scoring; by the time he spoke to reporters he seemed to know exactly what he wanted to say.
He heaped praise on runaway winner Scottie Scheffler, calling his current run one of the most prolific in the game’s history. “And he’s a great person, and I think he’s a wonderful ambassador for our game, as well,” McIlroy added.
He glowed about the host venue, calling Royal Portrush “one of the best two or three venues that The Open goes to.” That echoed widespread sentiment from this week’s players; there’s a sense that St. Andrews’ Old Course is No. 1 by default but Portrush measures up to any other stop on the rota.
And he explained, briefly, what the week had meant to him, taking special care to express his gratitude for the opportunity. He said he felt a lot of pride “that I’m from these shores.” He said how glad he was the Open had returned. He said he’d remember his reception on No. 18 for a long time.
“It’s been an amazing week, just — I feel so thankful and just so lucky that I get to do this in front of this crowd,” he said. “Hopefully I’ll have one or two Opens left here, if the R&A decide to keep coming back — probably one while I’m still competitive and another one while I’m more gray than I already am.”
That was a humbling admission. We’ve grown so accustomed to McIlroy being a top-five player in the game that the idea of him someday not being competitive is jarring. But there’s power in scarcity; part of what made this Open so meaningful was knowing it wouldn’t soon be back.
In all, the week felt like closure for McIlroy. He arrived at Royal Portrush with unfinished business; he left with a more-than-respectable finish and a catalog of unforgettable moments. Sunday’s final round also marked the conclusion of a major championship season that saw McIlroy’s wildest golf dreams fulfilled but brought new turmoil, too. It was notable that he said he was leaving Portrush at peace.
“I’ve gotten everything I wanted out of this week apart from a Claret Jug,” he said.
As McIlroy was whisked away from the podium, a reporter lobbed one more question his way. All week, McIlroy had mentioned, he’d tried to keep his emotions in check. Was there a moment that the gravity of all of this — the adoration, the pressure, the ovations, the redemption, the relief — had landed? Had it hit him, what it means to come home?
He smiled and cocked his head for just a moment, considering before responding.
“Not yet,” he said.
And with that he bounded off the podium and around the corner, away from microphones and the crowds, away from the sounds of the trophy ceremony, finally alone. Seagulls cried out overhead.
Dylan Dethier welcomes your comments at [email protected].
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