[caption id="attachment_69514" align="aligncenter" width="600" caption="Royal Portrush will host the 2012 Irish open."]
The Irish Open golf championship has been flirting with the financial out of bounds in recent years, but given its return to Royal Portrush this year - and all the chatter and ballyhoo that will accompany the holding of the tournament on the famed County Antrim links - it's hard not to believe that what is the premier golfing event on the Irish calendar is now turning a corner, or perhaps a dog leg.
No matter what the metaphor I have to say that I'm delighted that the Open is still being played for the simple reason that I've put my own share of work into its story down the years, or at least many years ago.
You see, I once had a chance of winning it.
Now before you start checking my name out on Google to see if I'm up in the rankings with Rory and Tiger, I should point out that by winning I'm talking more in the sense that Stevie Williams would see it.
In other words, I didn't play in the Irish Open. But I did once caddy in it, and indeed performed other long forgotten functions on the tournament's winding road to Portrush, amid the dunes of which it will be played June 28-July 1.
Suffice it to say, even Paddy Power wouldn't have given odds on my caddying for the winner that long gone year. It was 1975 and the revived Irish Open was being held at Woodbrook in Bray, County Wicklow.
My guy (he was an English pro based in Sweden) had a tough go of it in the qualifying round and didn't make it. My earnings for those futile 18 holes, during which my advice to avoid rough, bunkers, trees, and the Irish Sea, didn't alter his fate, was a dozen golf balls, a horde which didn't quite translate into the bus fare home.
Despite my guy's demise, and my continuing poverty, the most important thing that year was that the Irish Open was back after an almost two decade hiatus.
It was sponsored that year by Carroll's, the tobacco company, and those with knowledge of the Irish game will know that Woodbrook had hosted a string of effective Irish Opens since 1963.
The pre-'75 tournament wasn't the Open though; it was called the Carroll's International and it seemed to be an annual event specially set aside for the O'Connor clan.
In my memory, Christy Sr. wins every year (actually four times between '63 '74) and when it became the Irish Open in '75, Christy O'Connor won it again, though this time it was the nephew, Christy Jr.
In both the later Internationals, and the first revived Open I worked mostly as a score recorder. This would entail approaching one of the players in a twosome as he came off the green that I was assigned to.
I once had to ask John O'Leary for his score after he hit his drive into a water hazard at the 12th. O'Leary took his shoes and socks off, stepped into the water and proceeded to hit something approaching a second score total for his round.
I was counting but had to ask anyway as he marched doggedly to the 13th tee. If looks could kill etc.
It was either at the end of the last International, or the revived Open that I had one of those moments that you remember for the rest of your life.
I was loitering in the car park waiting for my dad or uncle (both members) to take me home after the prizes were presented when one of the golfers walked up to me with a smile on his face and a bag over his shoulder.
He asked me to look after the clubs as he had to go back into the clubhouse to get something. I figured it was his runner's up check which was perhaps sitting on the bar and at this very moment in dire peril of finding a new owner.
Sure, no bother, said I.
And for a fair while I stood there cradling and hoisting off the ground the rather large bag of woods and irons owned by one Peter Oosterhuis, a name and face well familiar to U.S. golf fans as he is today a network commentator and resident of North Carolina.
"Oosty" eventually returned with an even bigger smile on his face, thanked me, bade me a cheery cheerio, and roared off in his Ford Capri leaving me to wonder why I couldn't have caddied for him, given all my local knowledge and ability to lift his bag a full two inches off the asphalt.
I have a feeling our paths may well cross again someday. My mother-in-law lives in North Carolina.
So you see now that I have more of a passing interest in this Irish Open, all of them, and no matter where they are played. If you allow for the principle of the butterfly flapping its wings on one side of the world, and a hurricane happening on the other, then the fact that the Open has lived to be fought over for another year all comes down to yours truly.
Well, maybe that's a stretch, a verbal hook, a linguistic shaft, a journalistic double-bogey. Then again...
But back to this year. In its early days, and we're talking the late 1920s and 30s, the Irish Open was fought over almost entirely by local players, they being Irish and British.
During the 1960s, Europeans and even the occasional American would turn up for the International and this trend was well in train by the 1975 revival.
By the 1980s, sponsors Carroll's were flying in big American names and two of them, Ben Crenshaw and Hubert Green, would capture the Irish open title.
After that it was a cavalcade of rising European Tour stars with names such as Ballesteros, Faldo, Langer, Olazábal and Woosnam who would have Irish galleries applauding and roaring with excitement in venues such as Royal Dublin, Portmarnock, Druid's Glen and Mount Juliet.
The Open would continue on its path during the peak Celtic Tiger years but would have to compete with an even more financially endowed event, the European Open at the K Club.
Still, there was yet that particular prestige attached to the Irish Open that only comes with a title associated with the host-country's name and the Open has continued despite the comings and goings of main sponsors, not to mention the migration of the European Open to Britain.
Last year's Irish Open, held at Killarney and won in exciting fashion by Englishman Simon Dyson, lacked for a primary commercial sponsor and so Discover Ireland stepped into the breach.
Arguably, however, the biggest possible news for the 2012 event was always going to be the tournament's venue.
Royal Portrush is somewhat unique in that it has hosted both the Irish Open - in 1947 when Harry Bradshaw won it - and the British Open - in 1951 when the plus-foured Max Faulkner triumphed.
Faulkner, by the by, would make dapper appearances at Woodbrook during the 1960s, looking like he had walked out of a Harry Vardon photo.
Leaving aside for a moment that there is no border in Irish golf, most people who follow the game on a global basis are less aware of this than the fact that there are two flags for Irish players that appear on leader scoreboards - and rather frequently too in recent years.
So a return to Portrush was always a possibility, but became virtually inevitable with the exploits of Graeme McDowell, who hails from the area, Darren Clarke, who lives locally, Rory McIlroy, who is from close by, and Padraig Harrington, who is from down the road a wee bit but who, like McDowell and Clarke, is a member of the club.
This major-winning foursome will provide enough star power to draw in a good crowd at the end of June but a lot of effort will be going into attracting top international players to the Irish Open in the coming months with McDowell and Clarke tugging at a lot of sleeves.
The idea is for an event that will pull in capacity crowds, hopefully a major commercial sponsor, plenty of international big names and with a combined effect of returning the Irish Open to its rightful place in the top tier of world golf tournaments.
It's all to play, eh, fore.
