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THE 148TH OPENJuly 15, 2019Darren ClarkePortrush, County Antrim, Northern Ireland, United Kingdom MODERATOR: It's my pleasure to welcome the 2011 Open champion, Darren Clarke, to the interview room. This is obviously going to be a very special week for you. How much are you looking forward to teeing it up in the first group on Thursday and playing in front of tens of thousands of Irish fans? DARREN CLARKE: Yeah, that 3:00 gym session could be early. Tiger does a 1:00, I'm going to try to do a 3:00. We shall see. It's going to be amazing. To think, it didn't seem that long ago they announced The Open is coming. It's all happened very quickly with all the work they've done to get the course ready. And then we're in Open Championship week. Thursday morning is going to be exciting. And I just hope I manage to get one going straight down the fairway. Q. Was it a complete shock to you and did anybody ask you whether you'd be okay with it? DARREN CLARKE: I couldn't possibly say. Mr. Slumbers asked me about three weeks ago if I would do them the honor of hitting the opening tee shot. And it's Royal Portrush and when The R&A asked you, it's a definite yes. I said I'd love it. Q. You're one of the last people I'd think of as a ceremonial golfer. DARREN CLARKE: But that's part of it, isn't it? That's what they do. But 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. Sometimes it can be a good draw teeing off here at half 6:00 in the morning. We shall see. As soon as he asked me it was always going to be a yes. Will there be tears? No. I'll just be very proud that we have it back here in Northern Ireland. I think The Open Championship is going to start, and I think the other guys would say the same sort of thing. It goes without saying, it's a huge thing to have it back here in Northern Ireland again. It's going to be an amazing tournament. If you see how many people were in here yesterday watching and again today and all the practice tickets are all sold out. The atmosphere is going to be sensational. Q. Obviously your major victory and those of G-Mac and Rory were part of the push to get The Open back here. Can you reflect on what you were saying to Peter Dawson to persuade him? What was the persuasive argument that you managed to get it over the line? DARREN CLARKE: Well, it was us, but I think it was Padraig started it before that, when he won all his majors. Then whenever we came along behind him again. I don't know if any of you saw the documentary that Steven Watson had done, last night it was on television over here and on Sky this morning. We had a little bit to do with it, but there were more important people than ourselves. And to highlight the golf course. He obviously knew the golf course. But the political climate until recently, they were never going to come here in that scenario. And from how far we've moved on from the Good Friday agreement when that was done, they were never bring a tournament this big when we had those troubles going on. And to see them being as brave as they have been to bring it up here has been wonderful. They had the Amateur championship in Portmarnock not too long ago, as well, and that was a huge success. The R&A are open to moving things around. We were speaking to Peter Dawson and just gently nudging him and saying Portrush is good enough. It's a wonderful test. He knew that anyway. But whenever he got together with Wilma Erskine here and Arlene Foster, and there was so much will to bring it here, I think, Peter succumbed to those ladies' terms, I would imagine. It came out very favorably for us, obviously. Q. It looks like you're going to get the opposite wind you usually get here. How is it going to play? And talk a little bit about the test. DARREN CLARKE: Well, I think, like any links golf course, I think you saw last week in the Scottish Open they didn't have any wind, the guys went low and made a lot of birdies. This is a slightly different proposition. Even without any wind it's still a very, very good test. The prevailing wind here is down out of the left on the first, and as you rightly say, it's more going to be down out of the right or from the right all week. So totally different wind. It's going to make those first few holes play a little easier, but as soon as you turn on 7, from there on it's going to be playing a lot more difficult. You're going to have some strong tee shots, very strong tee shots to hit on, for example, No. 11. All the ones -- the last few holes are going to play into the breeze, which is going to be good. Albeit we're not going to get much more than a 50-mile-an-hour breeze. That's the forecast I think. Some sun and showers, typical weather for up here. It would be nice to have the course a little bit firmer, but we got heavy rain last week, so it softened it up a little bit. It will be interesting to see, especially for myself, how some of the best players in the world try to play this golf course. It's a very -- you can try and take it on at your peril, if you want to, or you can try to play smart and take it over corners, but with doing that you need to be very committed to your lines. Because if you're taking an iron and going over, if you push that five, ten yards, you're in thick rough, lost ball, and you have to be committed. It's going to be interesting to see how the guys play it. The golf course is in pristine condition. The greens are going to get up to about ten and a half. That's what they want, the goal speed for the week. The rough is very thick out there in the areas. I'm sure the guys are out there doing their homework figuring out where they can afford to miss it and where they can't. But the thing about Royal Portrush, because of our location here, we do get quite a lot of wind and bad weather or whatever, but there's always a way to play this golf course. Harry Colt, when he designed it, there's always a way to use the ground. And the guys will be looking for those areas short of the green, if they do get in trouble, how they can use the ground to make the most of the opportunities. If you're in the rough, you have a flier, whatever, and you try to fly the ball onto these greens, you're going to be asking for more trouble. So the astute guys will be trying to figure out their way to get around. Q. It's been noticeable, understandably a lot of guys have turned to you when doing their homework. To what extent do you tell them or stay as a competitor? DARREN CLARKE: I probably told them too much, really. Q. But that's part of the consideration, you want to beat these guys? DARREN CLARKE: Yeah, of course I want to beat them. But at the same time, they're all good guys, I like them all. I've been giving them whatever information that they wanted and a little bit more. But the golf course has a few things that you really need to know about it, which holes to attack and which ones not to. But again, this golf course, because there's so many different angles, the fairways are generous here. The fairways aren't like some links courses you go to, there's not a lot of slope in them. Royal Portrush, if you hit it on the fairway, most of the time it will stay on the fairway. Picking your line off the tee and whatever club you're going to do, to hit off that tee is vitally important. There's holes out there you can see guys hitting driver, 3-wood, 2-iron, 3-iron, 4-iron, 5-iron. It's all down to how they see the hole. So I've been trying to share with the guys that I've been playing with, where is the best place to come in from? Where is the best place to attack each hole location from? Which is not always obvious when you haven't played here before. But it's paramount to hit the fairways. If you're not in the fairways you're going to struggle to get around. You can still get around, but your birdie opportunities are going to be minimized. And they do have quite a few sneaky pins out there. If there's not much wind I would imagine The R&A will use the more challenging pins to test the guys a little bit further. We're not going to have that strong of wind but I think there's going to be a good, stern enough test. The thing about Royal Portrush, it's a fair golf course. If you play well around Portrush you should have the opportunity to score well. If you're missing too many shots you're not going to get around Portrush, and that's the way it is. That's why it's a Harry Colt masterpiece. Q. I read last week you were nearly a victim in '86. What do you remember about that and coming out of that era, what does it mean to have this event back in Ireland? DARREN CLARKE: It was a job that I had setting up a bar and there was a bomb behind it. We got a bomb scare. And everybody out -- I was in there from 6:00. The club opened at 8:30. I'd been setting up one of the bars. It was before we had the little button things, we had the bottles and mixers, for those of us who are old enough to remember those. But the button things I had to fill up with all the little bottles. The bomb scare at 8:30, everybody out, bomb went off at 9:00 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. Q. If you had to pick a winner this week, and if it wasn't going to be yourself, is there a name that springs to mind? DARREN CLARKE: Obviously I'd take Rory, wouldn't I? Who else would I say? I think I've played quite a bit with Adam Scott the past couple days. And he has been -- what's the best word -- imperious is the best word to describe him. He's been very, very impressive. Adam has a very good ball flight. That's why he played well in Open championships before. Adam has been very impressive. Rosie was, as well. The standard of guys up here, the top players in the world are all very good. And it's who gets the most comfortable with the golf course are the ones that are going to be the most successful. That's the easy way to say it. Certainly Adam impressed me hugely last week when we played together. Q. Tiger obviously got in yesterday. DARREN CLARKE: Tiger, you can't -- you can never -- you don't know what he's going to do, after his Masters victory. Here in Portrush we don't have that many bunkers here. But the way that Tiger, when he won at St. Andrews and Hoylake, when he kept it out of the bunkers on both of those, didn't he? Did he hit any -- one at Hoylake, and kept them all out of St. Andrews. He knows how to get around a links golf course. Now, whether hitting an iron off all these tees is long enough to get around it. It's not quite as fiery as it was last year obviously in Carnoustie. So if he does have to go to his driver -- nothing wrong with his driver, I'm just saying he likes to be the master tactician, which he has been on many occasions. And so Tiger Woods playing, you can never write off Tiger Woods. Q. In the film with the three fathers, your dad, Jerry, and G-Mac, and you guys had to travel all over Ireland to play tournaments. Your dads brought you down, your mums supported you. Where would you be if your dads had decided it wasn't worth the effort? DARREN CLARKE: At what point are you referring to? Q. Would your father say, Come on, we've got to go to... DARREN CLARKE: No, I started coming with my dad when I was nine years old. And I started playing when I was 11. He got me started playing when I was 11. I grew up playing rugby and golf at the same time. My dad never forced me into anything. He let me go whichever one -- I was decent on the rugby pitch and my golf was getting better and better. Dad would always say to me, Do you want to come and play? What do you want to do? I was playing rugby four or five times a week, then go to the golf course for a couple of holes. And like any player that's going to be here this week, I'm sure all their parents were supportive. Some may have been a little bit more, as you say, pushing. But certainly my parents never had to. They had to try and keep me away from the golf course. I wanted to play 72 holes a day in the summer when I was growing up. I couldn't get enough of it. I had the rugby, which was the team. And then I had the golf which was me against the golf course. So I had the best of all worlds. Sometimes I wonder if I did the right thing. Q. How do you cope with the pressure this week? DARREN CLARKE: As you rightly say, if you're playing well, having all that support and stuff is wonderful. 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, that's been part of it. And obviously here, this is even bigger. This is huge. This is the biggest and best tournament in the world. So it's part of dealing with your own expectations is part of the whole thing. But as you guys know, I've always been good and bad, pretty hard on myself in the past. 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. So I'll try and enjoy it as much as I possibly can. Q. You saw the balls down there, you're part of the golfers that host The Open. Can you give us any indication of when you might be doing it, possibly next year or the year after or -- DARREN CLARKE: I'd love to tell you but I can't. Because it's up to the Tour, the European Tour, the ones who decide who is going to do what at which rota. I'll let you take that up with them. Yes, at some stage in the future I have been asked if I would be the host. That's all I can say. MODERATOR: Tommy Fleetwood is about to join us. Darren, good luck this week. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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