PORTRUSH, Northern Ireland — Those anxious souls in the grandstands, gazing on their hero below, inched forward in their seats—an almost imperceptible lean, telegraphing their anxieties. They held a collective breath as the club drew back, each of them on tenterhooks, and when the man in their midst launched his tee shot, and they saw that the diminishing white sphere would not drift out of bounds, they exhaled with a relief they’d been coveting for six agonizing years …
If we were feeling especially dramatic, that might be the way we’d describe the scene on the first tee Thursday afternoon at around 3:10 p.m. British Standard Time, when Rory McIlroy hit what can be reasonably described as the most anticipated first tee shot of 2025. Unfortunately for our romantic narrative, the reasons why it was the most anticipated first tee shot are mostly negative:
1. In 2019, playing in his home nation’s first Open Championship since 1951, and the first of his lifetime, McIlroy had a disastrous experience on this same hole, launching his opening tee shot out of bounds and making a quadruple bogey. Considering the history that had kept the Open out of Northern Ireland for almost 60 years, and considering the poetic possibilities of Rory winning, it was like a first-round knockout for the villain in a fight that you expected to last hours. Thus began a miserable slog, ending with a 79. He rallied beautifully on Friday but ended up finishing just a shot outside the cut line.
2. This week, in the return to Portrush, as if the specter of that first shot didn’t loom large enough in his imagination, McIlroy hit tee shots on Monday and Tuesday out of bounds as well. Now, to invite drama back in the narrative, you could reasonably suggest that his relationship with the first hole could be described with the word “haunted.”
Hometown hero. Rory’s underway.
Watch his Featured Group on R&A TV. pic.twitter.com/h5thEyuNsX
— The Open (@TheOpen) July 17, 2025
Speaking to the press on Monday, McIlroy admitted he wasn’t ready for the ovation he experienced on the first tee in 2019—”like, geez, these people really want me to win.” He had tried to isolate himself from that aspect of the tournament, to pretend that it wouldn’t affect him, but suddenly he had the stifling sense that he didn’t want to let these people down. The pressure didn’t serve him, so he vowed this year to embrace it.
“It’s nice to be able to accept adulation,” he said, “even though I struggle with it at times. But it’s also nice for the person that is seeing you for the first time in a few years. It just makes for a better interaction and not trying to hide away from it.”
But that’s all theoretical, and the wayward shots in the practice round seemed to speak of the actual lingering effects of 2019’s ghosts. It felt as though the moment grew throughout the week, which was confirmed at least anecdotally by the stream of media making their way from the comforts of the tent into the windy environs of the first tee to see what would happen.
So what happened?
What happened is that the name “Rory” is fun to shout. It sounds in the British/Irish vernacular likE “ROAR-ehhhhhh,” and it rang out for the first time as he crossed the walking bridge to the putting green, 10 minutes ahead of the shot. The blue-gray flags with the claret jug silhouette whipped in the southwesterly wind above the grandstands, the camera crane with its long neck loomed ahead of the tee, and people dressed in dark colors huddled in the seats and lined both sides of the fairway. Ahead, down that thin stretch of green grass, out of bounds pressed in on both sides, some of it of the devilish internal variety. And when Rory stepped onto the tee, in a gray sweater, light gray pants, and white hat, and of course he earned the loudest ovation of all. One or two people even stood.
He hugged Tommy Fleetwood—a tight embrace. He hugged Justin Thomas—slightly more casual. He waited for his turn, swinging his iron to stay loose, looking very lonely in the amphitheater. In the interim, some of us joked about the magnitude of the moment, undercutting it, but one writer hit it on the head: “We’re all here for a reason.”
David Lancaster, the official starter, set the stage:
“This is game number 46. On the tee, from Northern Ireland, Rory McIlroy.”
More applause. More silence. Phones were lifted along the rope lines by those who insisted on experiencing the moment through a digital filter. The club came through, the ball took off low against the wind, and McIlroy took a long, questioning look at its flight.
It did not go out of bounds. And it was at that moment, as McIlroy disguised his relief in an intense study of his yardage book, that we all realized this moment immediately became less meaningful when it didn’t result in total failure. Now, there were 70 shots left to hit, give or take.
The immediate postscript is that he ended up in the left rough, hacked out, played a nice undulating putt from off the green, and then missed a relatively easy par putt.
That was OK. A bogey isn’t death; a quadruple is.
And McIroy had survived. It was notable that in the milliseconds after his tee shot, not a single inane shout came down from the gallery—everyone was too invested in the outcome. The inanities came back in predictable form for Fleetwood and Thomas, and then Rory marched down the fairway, looking taller than normal, eyes ahead, chased by the sound of his own name.
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Is it the British Open or the Open Championship? The name of the final men’s major of the golf season is a subject of continued discussion. The event’s official name, as explained in this op-ed by former R&A chairman Ian Pattinson, is the Open Championship. But since many United States golf fans continue to refer to it as the British Open, and search news around the event accordingly, Golf Digest continues to utilize both names in its coverage.
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This article was originally published on golfdigest.com
