After a year in the spectacular surrounds of the Newcastle coastline, the Irish Open returns to the Greater Dublin commuter belt for the second installment of its current three-tournament biennial run at the K Club.
The Kildare venue tends to be popular among golf fans in the capital given its ease of access from Dublin and among outside broadcasters given its proximity to Dublin airport.
It tends to be rather less popular among US golf podcasters and assorted obsessives, who invariably explode into a fit of rage when they discover that the Irish Open is not being held at a links course.
Royal County Down, which played host to a hugely dramatic finale last year in which Rasmus Hojgaard edged out Rory McIlroy, treated viewers a gorgeous televisual spectacle, with American golf influencers urging their followers to flip over to whichever obscure channel had the Irish Open as much to savour the backdrops as the golf on offer.
The 2024 venue was once again selected as Golf Digest’s No. 1 course in the world for 2024-25 – outside the United States, that is. The Palmer North course at the K Club does not get quite the same love by the architecture community.
McIlroy won his sole victory in the event at the K Club back in 2016, the Irish Open venue to which he had probably the weakest emotional attachment and thus the least pressure.
As we know, the year 2025 will go down as a historic one in the annals of McIlroy, regardless of whether he misses every remaining cut and is hosed 6&5 in every Ryder Cup match.
No denying who is the star attraction at the K Club this week as grand slam champion Rory McIlroy eyes a second Irish Open title – @DAVEKELLY4 reports pic.twitter.com/B1z4Igo5Hs
— RTÉ Sport (@RTEsport) September 3, 2025
Nonetheless, it feels a long time since the giddy aftermath of his Masters victory, when many were prophesying, with some conviction, that he was in position to have a real cut at the calendar grand slam, something that has never yet been achieved in the professional era. (Tiger Woods did achieve a slam of a sort when he held all four majors at one time after the 2001 Masters.)
It got to the stage where the PGA Championship, held at one of his favourite tracks at Quail Hollow, was essentially being pencilled in as a sure thing – somewhat reminiscent of Irish soccer fans assuming an opening draw against Croatia in Euro 2012.
But McIlroy flopped badly at the PGA and fell into a strange post-Masters funk, blanking the media for a time due to his annoyance over the sensationalised coverage of his ‘non-conforming driver’ issue at Quail Hollow.
Instead, this summer’s major season ended with Scottie Scheffler re-asserting himself as indisputably the best player in the world, winning the PGA Championship and the Open Championship at a canter and doubling his major tally to four. Anecdotally, many floating punters in this country took Scheffler’s glorious approach to two feet on the opening hole on Sunday at Portrush as their cue to switch their full attention to the hurling final.
As it is, McIlroy arrives at the Irish Open – the competition he personally sponsored for some years – with the chance of securing a somewhat more obscure double. Namely, becoming the second player to win the tournament the same year as winning the Masters.
Seve Ballesteros winning his first of three Irish Opens at Royal Dublin in 1983
For now, Seve Ballesteros remains the only reigning Masters champion to win the Irish Open, a feat he achieved in Royal Dublin in 1983.
This was back in what many old timers will recall as the lucrative heyday of the Irish Open, when a tobacco company was putting the money up and when it was still politically acceptable to host the event at a club with a men-only membership policy. (By contrast, the last time Portmarnock hosted the Irish Open in 2003 – after a 13-year hiatus – it prompted a storm of controversy and a heated debate on Questions & Answers. It hasn’t been back since.)
Between 1983 and 1994, Ballesteros, Bernhard Langer, Ian Woosnam and Nick Faldo all won on multiple occasions, with Jose Maria Olazabal winning once in 1990.
Since the tournament returned to the European Tour roster in 1975, four players have won it in the same summer they won a major – Ballesteros in ’83 and Faldo in 1992 from the above posse. Then there was Harrington, whose win in Adare Manor in 2007 ended a 25-year drought for home players. Before all that was the wildcard one – the ‘Pointless’ one, if you will – Hubert Green, who pipped Ben Crenshaw in Portmarnock in 1977, two months after winning the US Open.
From the turn of the millennium, the Irish Open has tended to be the preserve of workaday European Tour journeymen – Jon Rahm’s two wins in 2017 and 2019 bucking the trend – with our old friend ‘Identikit Scandinavian’ proving especially hard to keep down. Seven Scandinavian players have won since 2000, including the last two editions.
There are a couple of surprise A-listers in town this week, by far the most notable being Brooks Koepka.
Prior to his major-winning splurge in the late 2010s, Koepka had been a European Tour regular in his early years as a pro, though this never extended to teeing off at the Irish Open, which was in the midst of a lean phase.
He had initially been one of the big winners of the great LIV schism, shaking off his 2022 ennui to win another major at the 2023 PGA Championship and then earning selection as a largely uncontroversial pick for that year’s Ryder Cup.
However, sluggishness has taken hold again in 2025 amid knee injury issues and putting woes. He was miles away from consideration for Bethpage.
This is in contrast to Tyrrell Hatton, who managed to qualify automatically for the European team despite the disability of his LIV membership, with a win at the Dubai Desert Classic and a tied-fourth finish at the US Open propelling him into the top-six.
Hatton is another LIV player in Kildare this week, though Sergio Garcia – an Irish Open winner as a 19-year old back in 1999 – cried off at the eleventh hour, having evidently lost the enthusiasm for it in the wake of the confirmation of his exclusion from the Ryder Cup team.
On Thursday, Koepka will tee off in the day’s most high profile grouping alongside Shane Lowry – with France’s Martin Couvra completing the trio.
Brooks Koepka during his practice round at the K Club
Lowry arrives for another Irish Open having been confirmed in the Ryder Cup team for the third successive time. Following his expected announcement as Luke Donald’s first pick, he was interviewed, via Zoom, from one of the expensive living rooms in the hotel.
Two years ago at this course, Lowry delivered one of his best Irish Open displays since his unforgettable victory at Baltray in 2009. Three rounds of 68 on Thursday, Friday and Sunday saw him finish on 12-under overall, in a tie for third, just two strokes adrift of Swedish winner Vincent Normann.
That marked Lowry’s first top-10 finish in seven months, the 2009 winner telling RTÉ’s Greg Allen that it was “some of the best golf I’ve played all year.”
On the whole, Lowry has mustered a stronger showing in 2025, even if his form was better in the first half of the year than the second half. It was soured by a miserable major season, where the Hatton-esque cry of ‘f**k this place’ briefly became something of a personal catchphrase.
Low points included an 81 on Sunday at Augusta, his ball somehow wedging itself into another player’s divot on the fairway at the PGA, picking up his ball on the green without marking it amid the carnage at Oakmont, and then the notoriously harsh two-stroke penalty for a barely perceptible ball movement in Portrush.
Shane Lowry says he is “feeling good” in the wake of Ryder Cup selection
Nonetheless, Lowry has been commendably upbeat in the wake of it all and remains so ahead of another Irish Open. He performed strongly at the recent Tour Championship in East Lake, which included one of his finest ever putting displays en route to a 63 on Friday.
“It’s always a kind of weird week where you want to do really well,” he said of the Irish Open. “You put a lot of pressure on yourself, and once you get to the first tee on Thursday, you try and get rid of all that expectation and just play golf.
“But I’m feeling good. As the weeks have gone on over the last couple of months, I feel like I’ve started to play better and better and I’m pretty happy with where my game’s at. So I’m looking forward to the next few weeks.”
Seamus Power tees off alongside Hatton and two-time winner in 2025 Marco Penge. The Waterford golfer needs a spark after a difficult, injury-affected season in which he has mustered just one top-10 finish at the Valspar Championship in March.
There are 11 home entrants in total, including Conor Purcell seeking a third top-20 finish in his maiden year on the DP World Tour, and Tom McKibbin, now of the LIV tour.
Harrington, meanwhile, having formally ruled himself out of the Presidency, will tee off in yet another Irish Open early on Thursday morning alongside Jhonattan Vegas and Adrien Saddier.
Watch the Amgen Irish Open with RTÉ Sport. Live coverage on Thursday and Friday available on RTÉ2, with Saturday and Sunday on RTÉ One. All four days live on RTÉ Player